Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon | Date: May 20 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

In nature many wild animals spend most of their day searching for food which keeps them busy. When you keep wild animals in captivity and bring them food regularly, there is always a risk that they will get bored and evolve abnormal and stereotypical behaviours. This is a particular risk when you keep intelligent animals as e.g. primates. Enrichment is therefore an essential part of the daily routines here at Limbe Wildlife Centre. Enrichment should encourage the animal to display natural skills and species-appropriate behaviours.  Everyday we have to come up with new ideas for enrichment of the animals. Enrichment can be many things. An easy way to stimulate and enrich the animals is to make them work a bit for their food. This can be done by using food containers with small holes, by freezing their food or by simply hiding the food in their enclosures. It is important not to do the same kind of enrichment everyday as it will just become apart of their daily routine, loosing the novelty and significance of enrichment.

 Enrichment is especially important for animals that we need to keep alone e.g. during their quarantine period. At the moment we have one single female drill in the quarantine. We put a lot of effort into stimulating her. Drills love to dig in the soil for small animals, so we have put a big pile of soil in to her cages which she really enjoys.  

Our volunteers at the moment, Annabelle Squires and Michelle Stevens love to do enrichment and the animals love them for it!

In the pictures you see our baby chimp Mayos enjoying a lollipop made out of frozen fruit, juice and honey.  It was a special treat for our chimps made by Annabelle on a hot day. Like us humans, chimps love cold things on sunny days.

  An old t-shirt can be great enrichment too, as you can see on this picture. Our young chimpanzee Mbam spent a whole afternoon playing with this t-shirt, tearing it apart.  

Here you see Michelle preparing enrichment for the gorillas, while they are waiting and watching excitedly. The enrichment here is honey and peanuts hidden in big leaves.  

As you can see enrichment can be very simple, but still be a joy for our animals.  If you want to support our enrichment program and help to make our animals happy we always welcome donations.