Explore the zoo
Primate enrichment
Click here to read Janie and her Enrichment Puzzles - a Primate enrichment project by Brian Halkyard. Brian is a teacher at Glamorgan School who completed a Royal Society of New Zealand Fellowship at Auckland Zoo's Discovery and Learning Centre.
By smearing food in
numerous places, the orangutans are encouraged to forage, as
they would do for food in the wild. Orangutans are a
predominantly arboreal species so placing food higher
up also encourages them to climb and forage up high.
In the wild, orangutans often use tools, like sticks, to get food, like retrieving particular parts of a fruit, or digging insects out from a log or rock. This enrichment item encourages tool use that would occur naturally in the wild.
This
enrichment item stimulates the orangutans to manipulate the
pinecone in order to retrieve food. In the wild, they would
manipulate certain food like fruit, to extract particular parts of
the food that they want to eat. Sometimes you will also see
them using a tool, like a stick, to retrieve the food.
Iceblocks encourage orangutans to manipulate the
food item to obtain food. You will see them using a stick to
break away the ice or just simply smashing the iceblock against
something to get the fruit out.
The coldness of the iceblocks makes it uncomfortable for the
orangutans to hold it, so often you will see them use something,
like a sack, as a glove to protect their hands. Similar
to when they eat Durian fruit in the wild (this fruit has prickles
on the outside), so orangutans will use a leaf to protect their
hands while holding the prickly fruit.
Using iceblocks keeps the orangutans occupied for long periods as the ice gradually melts to reveal the fruit.