Animal Academy- January

This month at animal academy the kids worked with some of the mammals and learned about the mammals with prehensile tails. The main focus of this month was animal enrichment. When animals are kept in captivity they could get bored and making enrichment toys and activities for them makes their lives more interesting.

The kids learn about skunks, kinkajous, white nosed coatis, lemurs, wallaby, bintarongs, foxes and lynx.





There are a variety of toys, foods, scents and materials for the kids to make enrichment items for the animals. They first observe the animal they will make a toy for and then try to make something that will interest that animal.


Oh and it wasn't just us who went to animals class this month, Hayley, Colin and Tristan brought their ferrets (with prior permission).



I was worried that they wouldn't know which ferrets were their own after they visited with the dozen resident ferrets. Hayley was appalled that I didn't think she would know her own ferret! Thankfully no ferrets were confused during the visit.


Another interesting development this month was the fact that a regular rat had bred with a hairless rat and the babies were a mix of furred and almost hairless.

The wallabies have a habit of chewing the walls in their enclosures! Guess they need even more enrichment.


The fox was allowed a visit with one of the owners dogs for his enrichment as he enjoys playing with the dogs.


A box was smeared with all sorts of interesting smells and tastes for the Canadian Lynx.


The skunk enjoyed some food hidden in a box.


Colin made something for the coatis, food hidden in a toilet roll tube wrapped in newspaper that had a variety of scents on it. I think the funny face on Colin is due to the scents on his enrichment toy.


Tristan smeared peppers on a stuffed animal for the coaties, he had noticed that they liked his Webkinz which he brought along so he felt they would love a toy animal of their own. peppers are one of their favorites foods.



Then Hayley had the idea to put the toy in a bag/tunnel.


They covered the animal with shredded paper so the white nosed coati would need to do a little searching for the enticingly scented toy.


Didn't take him long to find the toy and he loved it!

Yet another fun month at the animal academy.