Penny Pinching and Picky Eaters

Penguins refuse to eat cheaper fish after aquarium cut cost to fight inflation

As is so often the case these days, this story was circulating on social media with a misattribution when I saw it.  Originally, it was framed to suggest that it was the recent bout of high tariffs which had caused the aquarium in question to cut back to cheaper fish, which the penguins refused to eat.  In reality, this is a slightly older story - which isn't to say that a lot of zoos and aquariums won't be experiencing the tariffs in painful and sometimes unexpected ways in the near future, but just that this doesn't have anything to do with that.

Having a picky eater in a child is a headache.  Having a picky eater in a zoo animal can be far worse.  The child, of course, will grow up and either 1) get over it, or 2) move out and be responsible for their own neurotic eating habits.

Some animals, of course, are just picky by nature, only in their case it may be a species-specific dietary issue that can't really be helped.  Koalas aren't ornery in their food preferences... they aren't trying to be difficult, they just don't really eat anything besides eucalyptus.  If that's the case for a species, perhaps your zoo or aquarium doesn't take on that species unless you are sure that you can feed it.  Sometimes, however, you do wind up with animals with very strong - and not nutritionally necessary - food preferences, and in those cases, you may find yourself in a struggle.

Ideally, you want to get your animals eating a wide variety of foods to form a nutritionally complete diet.  Part of this is to enhance the health of the diet - nutrients lacking in one food may be found in another, and vice versa.  Part of it is the enrichment and stimulation of the diet.  And part of it is the reality that sometimes, supply chains fail and a preferred food item may not be available, in which case, you may have to adjust.  If you have an animal that stubbornly refuses to eat anything except one food, and so for ease and convenience you indulge that whim, you'll find yourself in major trouble if for some reason that food is off the market... or if you're experimenting with something else, for economy's sake.