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Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Today we are going to talk about enrichment. And we have two Alex's on the podcast. We have Alex Lasser-Gold, and we have Alex Bohardt. Alex. But for the sake of this podcast episode, would you mind if we called you mammal Alex and fish? Alex? Yeah, go for it. Which I realized it's kind of unfair because you are a mammal. Yeah. Are you a fish?
I mean, sometimes.
Why? You know, why not? Cool. So we're going to talk about enrichment today. And this is going to be interesting, too, because we have two people on today kind of talking about the same thing. But like I said, on both sides. So feel free to interrupt each other, feel free to talk over each other, do not be respectful at all to the other guests
to debate over whose enrichment is better. And it's quite, I lose all I want.
Exactly, exactly. Maybe we can start a little bit with what is in Richmond, I
actually have the definition. Yeah, here.
Point for fish.
So this is from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Shout out. So it is a process to ensure that the behavior and physical needs of an animal are being met by providing opportunities for species appropriate behavior and choices, which sounds very official. But basically, it is changing their environment in a way that they can do natural behaviors that they don't necessarily get to do if we aren't providing them with new things to play with, and working their mind and different foods and changing up their environment so that they have to think and do those natural behaviors, just kind of also long winded. Sorry.
I think that you know, the definition that AZA gives us So sort of like vague, because enrichment is a pretty broad term. And it doesn't necessarily only encapsulate like toys, which I think people are like, Oh, enrichment is a toy, but sometimes enrichment is other sensory input and things like that. And I know Alex with some of our mammals, you definitely incorporate those things, right? Oh, absolutely. Mammals, Alex, sorry.
Yeah, that's, that's the AZA definition. I feel like covers it pretty well. But I also think, like, I lay awake at night thinking about what is enrichment? Literally, I literally do, like, it's pretty existential, if you start thinking about it for too long, because ultimately, our entire job here at the Aquarium when we're taking care of animals, is to make sure that their life is rich and diverse, and parallels what you see out in nature. And we do all of that every single day. And I think enrichment is just another layer of awesome input that we can provide, that creates an even more holistic, balanced life for all the cool animals that we have.
Yeah, I think it's really like that's a daunting task when you're like, Oh, I'm going to recreate the entire world that this animal might experience in its natural habitat here at the Aquarium. And so fish, Alex, what are some of the ways that you might incorporate enrichment in with some of the animals that you take care of? Yeah,
so it's very specific to different animals, because there's kind of easier enrichment like for an octopus, you can provide them with toys and things that they will they have to think and they have to use the brains to figure out, change up their environment. So they have to recreate their dens. And then you have kind of more difficult arrangement, like how do you enrich a coral?
Yeah.
Do you enrich a coral?
Yeah, do actually corals. And we mostly do this through food? So yes, corals do also eat, they don't just photosynthesize. So they obviously have very small mouths, depending on the size of the coral, some coral species do have larger mouths, but it's providing them when we dive with some of the smaller food items that will actually kind of feed directly to them. And that gives them enrichment as well as maybe moving them to another part of the exhibit so that they can thrive a little bit more
vacation. Little vacation field trip. So
excited to tell people that coral gets enrichment. Right. So ready, most
people don't even think about that. But yeah, so it definitely varies in the fish world because there's so many different types of animals. Yeah,
I mean, you have corals, which a lot of people don't necessarily even recognize is an ant. Move. And then you have like really big charismatic animals like sharks or raise or octopus, which I'm sure expect different types of enrichment. And apparently sea turtles too. But what about you? What does enrichment look like in the mammal, bird and amphibian world,
it varies really widely, depending on the species and even like, depending on the individual animal that we're looking at, but for some of our animals, like our otters that are really tactile and curious by nature, just providing them with novel objects can be hugely stimulating. So if you ever pass by our sea otter exhibit, you're gonna see a lot of cool stuff, floating, sinking all around,
and Alex made all of it,
I made it. It was all me. But it's, it's all in there. And it's all rotating to make sure that it's novel. But the way that we see them utilize that stuff really looks like play, I think a lot of times it is play. So you'll see them like with an object just spinning in a circle, shaking, shaking a dog bone all around, you know, all kinds of like, fun, natural behaviors, things you would see out in the wild offensive. You know, they're they're doing what they do best, which is being mischievous and manipulating objects, things like that. And then for our seals, and sea lions, who can be a little more choosy when it comes to objects, we've definitely had a lot of objects that we presented to them, where they've been, like, cool, and just kind of swam away. And that's totally okay to enrichments about choice, and they get to choose how they want to interact. But sometimes, a more powerful enrichment strategy can be adjusting their schedule. So we've had the opportunity to come in at night and feed our seals and sea lions and feeding at dawn and dusk is certainly a natural behavior we see for those animals out in the ocean. And we definitely saw a strong response from all of them. From almost all omegas
Parker was the one who didn't want to wake up. Okay,
so Parker is the last to wake up, that's for sure. And like, when he wakes up, typically he'll wake up, he'll look around, it'll start yelling.
Also my morning, but
the cool thing, what if we're talking about like, how do we know if enrichment is working is over time as we've done this more and more, I've seen him enter the water more and more, especially if it's during a season when he's hungry and eating. So we'll toss fish into the water and it's dark. And that's definitely not something they're used to. And they get in there and start foraging. It's really cool. So just adjusting schedule. For
context, Parker is our oldest California sea lion and can be a little bit of a grump. But he is the biggest one. Yeah, he's our biggest he is the loudest, and he definitely makes the biggest stink about changes to his schedule. And so sort of kind of going along with that enrichment is good because it kind of breaks him out of his shell, you know, if he's doing the same thing every day, he's getting used to it. And so incorporating some change to his schedule, even timing of his feeds or waking him up early, is enrichment whether or not he specifically enjoys it, the minute he wakes up, it's
questionable 100 personal coaching. And it's getting his mind going and working and a little bit of like frustration, like when we're when we're doing a puzzle. And you get a little frustrated for a minute. That's part of the experience of being alive. Like it's
that when I do like a new board game, or like a puzzle or something, if I'm not immediately like, going great. I'm like, forget this does not need to be addressed. This is actually for me,
Alex to come to your house at dawn and wake you up and throw fishing. Cool, I'm awake now.
Thanks a lot, man. Cool. Well, I would love to hear a little bit more about your histories individually here at the Aquarium. We didn't even talk about what your job titles are. It's technically not just enrichment, right? You have a whole world outside of enrichment that you have to take care of every day. So fish Alex, would you like to go?
Sure. So I am the manager of aquatic sustainability at the aquarium. So majority of my job is actually working with our jellyfish and our aquaculture programs. So we're really starting like the picnic podia program, which I know you guys talked to Jen about already. And so
go back and listen. Yeah, that was our
into some of our conservation efforts and things like that, which is really exciting. But I am also on the welfare committee. So I work pretty closely with the other people who do welfare and a big part of our welfare programs is to incorporate enrichment because that is making For the animals are acting the way they need to?
And what about you? What about what's your background mammal, Alex,
I am a meme ologists here at the Aquarium, hence, mammal Alex. Oh, that's why we call you that, like I happen also because I'm a mammal. But that means I get to work with our seals or sea lions and our sea otters with some birds sprinkled in there. I have been working here for somewhere around a year and a half. But before that, I was a longtime volunteer. I love love, love this place, and I just wouldn't leave. Finally, finally got hired. But I think looking back at it enrichment was a big part of what I did as a volunteer as well. And now I get to coordinate enrichment for our bird, mammal, amphibian reptile collection of animals.
You're briefly with us on the fish side,
I started.
He started as a fish and turned in
evolution at work.
It happens right here in this room? How did you end up coordinating our enrichment programs like, either?
I think it was for me, because I was so heavily involved in our welfare, it just kind of evolved into that. And we do have an enrichment group, like a little committee for the fish side. So there's a person from each gallery that kind of gets together and helps to focus on different new enrichments and things that we can do, especially around holidays and the fun things that we can do for enrichment, then it's just kind of evolved that way. Very cool.
I think I just, I love watching the process of enrichment. Like I love watching, or trying different things. I love trying different things and seeing what responses we get. And I also just love talking to people. And enrichment is a team effort. And so I get to kind of worm my way into all kinds of different things that are going on, like might not be part of the penguin meeting. But I get to be like, can I come?
Are you solely the enrichment coordinator to be nosy. I sit in on every meeting. Like
it's enrichment for you as well, highly enriching for me.
He goes home exhausted with free welfare,
up all night thinking about more enrichment.
It's a selfish pursuit for sure.
I think it's great that you each sort of have your own like avenue into it. I think it's really a salient point that enrichment is a huge part of animal welfare, and animal welfare, or well being as ACA may define it these days is such a huge part of zoos and aquariums, and I think people don't always know about it. Do you want to touch a little bit on how enrichment and welfare sort of interlinked?
Sure, yeah. So we, as part of an ACA institution, are heavily involved in welfare. And I do think it's transitioning into well being now to encompass welfare as well as other things. And so we actually do assessments periodically, it depends on the animal and the enclosure as to how often we do these assessments. But we're constantly doing these assessments. And through those assessments, we're looking at their environment, their enrichment, and how they interact with their environment, how they interact with their friends, in their exhibits, as well as the life support, and the even down to like the lighting that they're getting, and we're scoring all these things. And if anything seems out of range or out of the ordinary, then we are immediately able to address that and make things better for those animals. So what's really helping with these assessments is doing enrichment because it allows these animals to do more of their natural behavior and interact with their cohorts, which is their other animal friends, in a more natural way. And we want it That's our whole goal is to make sure their lives are as natural as possible in the settings.
Yeah, I think one of the things that is one of the indicators on at least a mammal and amphibian and bird welfare assessments, I'm sure for the fish and in birds as well, is enrichment choice. And I love the wording of it because it says species appropriate enrichment. And so you're not gonna put a ball in with the coral. Like, we're not gonna use it to try. Alex is like, I'm gonna do it.
I just imagined like, those little tiny pull offs, like,
with like a tiny beach. Honestly, kind of cute and maybe we should try it. But I think, you know, it goes back to what Alex was saying. Like sea lions typically feed at their corpuscular they want to feed at dawn and dusk and so feeding them at dawn and dusk is enrich. dig into them. And so for some of the animals on the fishing invert side, what are some behaviors you're trying to mimic? And what enrichment do you employ to get those behaviors out of them.
So some things are like for animals to eat hard shelled items is the opening of different things. So maybe we'll feed them our child items every once in a while. But also to kind of make it more tricky is we will give them maybe a ball that they have to twist open or like a little clam that they have to open up, or an Easter egg, we use those a lot to that they have to open, or even freezing food inside ice, because then that's something that they have to like dig at and start to try and open. So it totally depends on the animal. But there's lots of different ways that we can mimic that feeding behavior, which is a big one. Another one is there's a lot of animals that build their nests or build homes. And so we will sound so mean, periodically, we will destroy those homes in a good way, in the best way possible, so that they have to rebuild those things. So like our mudskippers build tunnels, and so will every once in a while we'll fill in different tunnels. So then they have to dig those out again. And that's just part of their natural behavior, or what happened in in the life. Exactly, yeah. So at the tide comes in and fills those holes, and then they have to deal with new holes, and it's back to work. Oh, no. So it's really important that we're we know those animals and what they do in the wild so that we can kind of come up with creative ways to have them be able to mimic those behaviors.
Do you ever feel mean, like filling in the holes? I think it's just kind of like Sorry, guys.
Check it out. Again, like I know,
this is what you do all day, this tunnel. Yeah.
Don't say that. I think it's funny when you you know, you're incorporating things into these animals lives that you're like, This is a stressor. And I know that it is a stressor, because you now have to redo your tunnel, and you have to redo these things. But it's stress, sometimes a positive thing for animals to experience,
some stress is good stress. And things like manipulating temperature every once in a while. So like if we do a water change, and that breeze raises the tempo a little bit or lowers it a little bit on like, say the corals, that little bit of stress actually stimulates them to grow a little bit more. So it's like there's some stresses, good stress, if done in the right way.
There's a metaphor there for sure.
Or something I actually had a boss that you say that
some stress is good stress,
I think the same can definitely be said for our mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian animals, for sure. We I think one of the things I've thought a lot about with the enrichment that we provide our animals is, is it helping them to become more resilient individuals that live here at the Aquarium, they live really great life here, I think and it is different than the life that they are living, or that they might be living out in the ocean. Here at the aquarium, our sea otters do not need to worry about a great white shark. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't still be alert and still have all of their senses stimulated in the same way they might be alert if there was a predator around. So I think enrichment is a great way to find those parallels that can create those same like maybe small moments of stress, but that also kind of build strength that makes them I think it makes them it gives them an easier path to to overcome challenges they might face in the future. If they change exhibits, if they have a new friend on exhibit all of those things. I hope that the enrichment we provide them allows them the opportunity to be more resilient and to feel like they can solve problems rather than just experiencing the same thing every day. Yeah,
and maybe stress isn't even the right word, but more like changes, changes within their habitat changes that they would potentially experience in the wild two
things like our job. And what we've done here at the Aquarium, we've done such a good job of making habitats that are all meeting the parameters that all of these animals need, that they get sort of comfy and complacent and they stop doing animal things. They're like, cool, I don't have to worry about food. I don't have to worry about predators, and then they just kind of hang out. And I think that on the one hand, you're like that life seems really nice. But then on the other hand, you're like, what if no one ever came to my door, and then one day someone came to my door and rang my doorbell, I would jump out of my skin. And it's just sort of like, hey, just like mammals, Alex was saying, like building resiliency is really important to you know, create new experiences for them, that not every little thing is just going to stress them out because they're used to it and they've seen change.
What would be kind of the detriment of an animal not experiencing any enrichment.
Who I think you I mean, I don't think our animals here experienced that which is great. I think we have a strong enrichment program but but there are definitely recorded behavioral issues that people see when an animal is under stimulated or when they're not getting the enrichment they need. One word people might have heard before is stereotyping. So that's when an animal exhibits a repetitive behavior, particularly when that repetitive behavior becomes so apparent in their life, that it that it hinders them from doing other things. So, if you're really bored, maybe you're just going to tap your foot. And that's okay for a little bit. But if you're tapping your foot all the time, to the point where instead of swimming in your pool, you're tapping your foot, instead of interacting with objects, you're tapping your foot, that can be a problem. So we're always looking, at least on the mammal bird side, we're always looking for signs that an animal might need more input, just to make sure that they're emotionally physically and mentally as healthy as they can be.
And that's probably harder to manage in efficient invert, are kind of harder to monitor. Right?
It can be so I think more so on our side, it becomes physical, they can develop like fatty tumors, or goiters, things like that. Some of that is nutritional. But again, if you're not enriching them properly with the vitamins that they need in their diet, then you're you're not going to get those things from those animals, and particularly in octopuses, autophagy, when they actually will start chewing on their arms, because they're not being stimulated. So they're like, basically self harming because they are not mentally being stimulated enough.
So the octopus, and I know Brooke touched on the GPO last season, she said that basically, the octopus has its own hole
in Richmond. She has a closet, yeah, of just octopus, and he has a full on stuffed closet.
And now she's thinking otter stuff.
Well, the octopus needs everything he deserves,
deserves big animals can use the otter ones, some of her other octopus a little bit smaller, they just have a big tote. They don't have a whole closet.
She has a play box.
I think just to add one more anecdote about enrichment, kind of being good for animals and sort of what it can encourage it not necessarily just stress in a negative way, but like poison dart frogs is that I take care of their entire reproductive cycle is based around when floods come and when rains come and flood their habitat and knock everything out of the way. And so changing the furniture around and flooding their habitat for a day actually stimulates reproductive behavior, which is healthy for them, and they won't breed unless there's environmental change. And that level of environmental change is enrichment, because that's not their normal. Like, if every day I knocked all their stuff around. I don't think they love that. But if they saw it as a seasonal change, and like, okay, cool, here's my indicator, that's I should be doing breeding behavior that is healthy for them. And that stimulates that natural behavior. So it can even go as far as to be hormonal changes in the animals when you do the right kind of enrichment. And I think it's pretty cool to see changes you do. And then also be like, there's eggs in this tank, you know, like these frogs are reproducing, they're doing things they're supposed to do. And I imagine for a lot of like fish and invertebrates, that's the same kind of thing, but you would see
very similar we made it be like water temperature for jellyfish to they'll start to spawn or change their life cycles, like little things like that usually induce spawning. scrase
is great, at least good enrichment to like, I love that. Oh, yeah, everybody
does. And it's
used in rehab facilities to more and more like for animals that are being prepared to return to the wild enrichment can be a really important part of their recovery, which is really cool. It's just starting to learn about I think it's awesome. Maybe it will apply to our surrogacy program at some point, too, I'm
sure. Well, I think building resilience, you don't want otter sort of mercy. Yeah. Like, listen, I had my needs met, the whole time I was in there, releasing that animals not going to do as well, but exposing them to some stressors that allowed them to learn how to deal with that. It's going to be really beneficial.
So it kind of sounds like enrichment isn't only reserved for animals we deem quote unquote, intelligent, like our octopus are mammals that's preserved for all of Rangel's right. Yes. Awesome. Very cool.
What is your favorite enrichment for an animal that doesn't seem like it would get enrichment? Maybe this is a question more for fish, Alex, because I think most of mammals, Alex's animals seem like they should be reptiles. We'd like cool. That's true. Yeah. Okay, both of you. What is your favorite enrichment for an unexpected animal? The coral is pretty good. The
coral is good. When do you want me to talk about the turtle? Okay, so yeah, so turtles do also need enrichment. And if they, one in particular, if he doesn't get enrichment, he becomes very destructive and kind of rips apart the tank a little bit. And so we actually have built him a turtle girlfriend out of a trash. And everyone says
copper because copper was such a hot topic last season hopper
is a little angel. I love that turtle. So
he needed PR really because last season,
he was ready to fill our turtle.
He's such a good boy. He comes to his station when he's called he always always sitting in waiting. We have to do exams. He's like, right there. And he's like, I'm ready. Just pick me up.
I love turtle. It's blue. It's blue. Blue is the most destructive and lose an olive replaced
turtle. Yeah.
And where does Blue Live?
He is in soft coral garden. So it's the smaller side of the tunnel of trop reef.
Got it. And so Lou, in the absence of his artificial turtle girlfriend will destroy soft coral garden. Yes,
I mean, he will do it probably anyways a little bit. When he's not sleeping, those are his two hobbies is ripping corals out and sleeping. But when he has his girlfriend, he's less destructive.
We have I had of Lou redecorating. Yeah, when he was in trop reef, and people love it. Sorry to say
I'm sure they did. Everyone's while he would take a coral from like the tunnel and swim it all the way around the exhibit and like, drop it in the deepest part. Of course, like I don't want it here.
He's redecorate.
He also difficult to get it really far away? Do you think that there's some evidence, you know, like destructive behaviors, we might deem it like, maybe it's self enrichment? Do you think that there's a chance he's just trying to enrich himself?
I mean, I think it's possible, especially for things like redecorating. We actually have one of our female sheephead, who, when she was in lobsters, when she was little and tiny, she would take the shells of the muscles that we feed the lobsters and pile them in different places. And then she would take rocks and pile them next to the shells. So she would she would literally decorate it she so now she's bigger. And she's in blue Catherine, we don't see her decorating as much, but she's in a much more complex environment. She used to decorate all the time, and I loved it. So it's
adorable. I love that.
What about you? What are your reptile enrichment ideas? Mammals, Allah?
I, this is another kind of case of me just like sticking my nose where, you know, department but I'm like, that's cool. Can I watch it? But I've seen them do. Like for some of our native snakes, I've seen them provide native herbs in their environment. And that can be a scent enrichment, because snakes can smell so it's like, that's pretty cool to watch. Hang, right. Yes. Or would the gland kind of above? Yeah,
that's what I meant. Somewhere.
That's what they're doing.
Yeah, and they're doing it out of nerve, which is really cool. They're, I think it's really cool to see our reptiles explore new spaces and explore different, like their, we'll call it furniture rearrange, kind of like probably similar to the aquatic side, yeah, we'll change the various items in their environment that might require them to climb more or to burrow. And it's, it's impressive how much response you see, especially if you look at it through the lens of a reptile. So they might not be spinning around in circles and smacking something against the wall, like an otter would. But they're responding the way a reptile shed, which is kind of more slowly and more, maybe a little more methodically checking things out.
Are you saying otters aren't methodical but
like I would call authors the opposite of methodical,
they just, they're impulsive. They're incredibly. I love that for them. But I do think that you bring up a really interesting point of not just enrichment has to be species appropriate in terms of what inputs they have. Because if a reptile couldn't smell, putting an herb scent around wouldn't matter to it. But it has to be something that that animal can perceive. And so of course, you're not necessarily I don't actually know what corals can perceive. But like, something like I don't know that the sound necessarily impact a coral or maybe it would because of vibration.
Yeah, a little bit, they'll be more closed up. The sound. Flow is a big one, too. If they're unhappy with their flow. Actually, corals are very picky on where they go. And what they do. So it's like it has to be the right light level. It has to be the right flow. Depends on the coral, they're all different. But you'll see sometimes if you ever walked by a coral exhibit, and they're like super fluffy and like I don't even know pillowy and their little arms are out like that is the happiest coral. Oh,
now we know. So I guess that brings me to my next question. How do you measure the response to enrichment for different species like an otter is going to be different than the coral? Otter always look soft and pillowy. So How, what sort of metrics do we use to measure how an animal is responding to enrichment? Or is that something we record and measure? So
I think some of that is in our welfare assessments that we go through. And we do have, again, different assessments for each type of thing. So we actually have a coral assessment, we have a fish and invertebrate assessment. And then we have more specific for Ikonics, which are like our sharks and things like that. I call colonic sharks. But I think the biggest thing too, is knowing again, knowing your animals really well. So knowing what a lack of better term sad coral looks like, versus a happy coral, and not to the point where they're bleaching out and dying. Yes, that healthy, still very sad coral. But yes, a healthy coral, that just isn't thriving, is going to be really closed up there, polyps won't be extended, their color might be a little bit muted. So that's a sad coral. And so we try different things with them to get them super fluffy and extend their polyps, not to the point where they're sweeping their tentacles and stain their friends. But don't wait for me. So it's yeah, it's just really understanding and knowing your animals is the biggest thing. Yeah,
I would, again, like I think it's pretty similar. With mammals and birds and reptiles, you have to know that species and know the individual to kind of accurately interpret their response to enrichment. For us, we have five general goals that we go by, we have sensory enrichment, we have social enrichment, physical habitat enrichment, food related enrichment, and cognitive enrichment. And so when we present a, like when we present an otter with a puzzle feeder, or something that makes it a little more difficult to forage, often, that's a cognitive goal. And so we're looking to see like, are they does are they spending time thinking about how to get the diet out of it? Sometimes we'll present something that's maybe a little too difficult, and we'll see them look at it for about a second and be like, no, just throw it away. And maybe that wasn't the most successful enrichment. But we did learn something for sure from that. One
of my favorite ones that we did, maybe last summer or two summers ago, we did a watermelon stuffed with squids, it for the sea lions, and they wanted nothing to do with it. Very funny video because I did like the lead up like, you know. And they're just like, nope, nope, no, which I don't find them. That doesn't sound super appetizing. To me. I love a watermelon salad. I feel like it could be a little refined and it like there's some fat on there a little bit of a flaky sea salt.
Why didn't we do that
we have a goal for our sea otter program. To encourage our otters to use the water as much as possible. Out in the ocean they're going to be using they're going to be in the water the vast majority of their lives. Here they live a very cushy life and they have up space on deck. There's a lot of rock work for them to hang out on. But particularly now that we are starting the surrogacy program, we want Millie and Chloe our adult female sea otters that are going to be teaching everything to these pups that are going out into the ocean to teach those pups that the water is the safe place to be. So one of the ways we've measured success of enrichment in our program is by seeing if it encourages them to stay in the water more are these efforts, resulting in more time spent in the water. And that's something you really can measure, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
some of the things are totally quantifiable in that way. Some of those things are evaluating the fluffiness of a coral. But if you are the person who knows the animal, well, you are probably the best person to know whether or not your animals responding positively to enrichment or negatively to enrichment. In which case you either rethink your strategy hopefully, or maybe they kind of overcome stress over time. Madeline really wants to know something about challenges.
Before I do, do you guys have a time that you need hard out by? It's four o'clock now? No, I don't expect we'll record for longer than probably the next half an hour at max at the most. Okay. Good an aim for closer to 15. But we'll see we've got a lot of questions. Okay. I want to know about your respective challenges within Richmond. What are some things that, you know, maybe are frustrating?
Um, I think a big one is when animal doesn't want a new enrichment, like they just, they'll only work with their old ones that they already know so well. And it can only be so enriching, right, like once Yeah, so like when we were talking about measuring the success of enrichment so something with cephalopods is how quickly can they figure out this new piece of enrichment. So if we put food in Something, how quickly do they figure out how to open it. And usually the first time it takes a little while, and then they obviously start to learn it and becomes something that they are easier at. So it goes faster and faster and faster. And then you the first time it's like really challenging enrichment, and then it you know, it starts to dwindle. So then you want to give them something different. We do mix it up all the time, but like, slowly introducing different things. And then every once in a while, they'll just be like, No, I'm not going to try
them on my old one back. Yeah, I know, just like refute
because, you know, we take care of them really well. So they should like Nah, I'm not going to eat today. And like, they know that we're gonna still feed them because we're gonna take care of them. And I'm like,
it's like, if you were to hand someone to puzzle, and they did the puzzle every day, like, well, I'm, I know, I memorize a puzzle at this point. And then you're like, here's a new puzzle. I'm like, No, good. No, that's too hard.
I'm really good at the other puzzle.
When I do this one super fast, I get my food. So I'll just do I don't wanna.
That's funny about on the Mammal and Bird side.
I think if you ask people in the office, I already
know what you're gonna say. It's about record keeping. The reason I know that is because I'm historically not very good about recording my enrichment. I
will I will chase people down. I know you will. I know as an as a non husbandry person. I know that. I love it. Yeah,
I do my best to do it in like a cutesy fun way. But deep down. I want it recorded. And I think eventually all of that data will be really meaningful. But even thinking about how we rate enrichment is hard. That's definitely a challenge. And yeah, telling coming up to someone and being like, Oh, you cuddled with that? lorikeet? Did you record it? Did you put that interact? I do that naturally with them all the time.
So just like were you recording it all the time?
Were you recording it every time you did it?
So cuddling can be a form of enrichment? Absolutely. Social interaction.
Have you met are is that announced?
The baby? Yeah. lorikeet.
We Yeah, I think his name was Pegasus. His or her name is Pegasus.
Pegasus is the cuddliest. And it's definitely enrichment for him. You can see
it's a new lore that we have. It's not an actual Pegasus,
Pegasus. This is a big feeling
about it, like how we know yes, the biggest. But yeah, I mean, that little baby bird just wants to be snuggled and have social interaction and also is practicing flying to people and being a bird. Awesome. And it's pretty cool to see
you. And thanks, AOP. Team, you're doing a really good job recording. I know I'm I can be a little thrown.
I guess we kind of already touched on what you're recording, right? Yeah.
Yeah. It's how well it worked. What we did. I do an enrichment of the month email just for just so everyone can see what's going on. I'm always inspired when I see what's happening on the aquarist side. You guys just built essentially a scratching post? Oh,
yeah. We call it the sea turtle carwash. Oh, scrub hot. They love it so much.
enrichment of the month it's my mom. Yes, one.
Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I love that I in my seven years here getting to see the changes in enrichment and the fun stuff you guys come up with the things that you guys are pulling off are really, really cool and just gets better and better every single year. I love the new penguin enrichments those have been really cool to see. And just kind of the the way you all are able to use materials we have on hand. I think it's awesome. Yeah, it's
not always often isn't buying new toys. And you know, it's just kind of putting things we have, that we already know are safe and acceptable for the animals together in a novel way that they have never seen before. And sometimes even presenting something in a weird way is totally enriching for them. I wanted to ask you both what your favorite enrichment story is, from your history working with these animals.
A few years ago, we had some baby alligators.
Oh, I guess very cool. I romancing my talks about them. They're really really cool. They
were super, super cute and Stacy was the Aquarius that took care of them. And she came up with actually target training them so they each had their own color and shape. And then from there she tried because they like to eat like all the time but we obviously don't want to overfeed them. So she came up with giving them jello and ice cubes as enrichment too, so it'd be both in the water and on the beach so they'd have to like go in the water and try and find it and then go on the beach and oh my gosh, they were so cute.
They are really really cute. They am they are part of when I first started are changing gallery. I think it was vanishing animals. Yeah, but they went back to A or Another facility or it's yeah, it's I
think it's like an exotic sanctuary in honestly, Colorado,
they're still getting ice cubes.
I think they're, they're actually like, if I remember correctly and I could be totally wrong, that they are being housed near a hot spring. So the water that they're in is like 80 degrees, so they probably exploded in size. Probably and I don't even like ice cubes like wouldn't even cross their mind anymore.
Entire ice statues.
They're just in a Jacuzzi all day. That's good for them.
I think. I'll just to clarify when we say that animals are eating jello, it is unflavored gelatin. You will see food coloring mixed in it looks exactly like I've had guests ask me like, is that cherry jello? And I'm like, No, it's just unflavored gelatin, but it does provide some extra hydration and it can be reinforcing to animals to you know, do the motion of eating even though it's lower calorie and it's essentially just giving them water. Yeah, so don't think we're ever throwing
jello at them. Blue raspberry.
And we even did it with our sharks. So you know, they obviously wanted flavored
kind of flavor. Do you put in the shark JellO?
We didn't we didn't flavor it. We just did the plain unflavored jello, but
we were doing oil in there.
I mean, we could have done some fish juice or something.
I bet. You know those, like old cookbooks with like the weird someone. There's a sardine jello.
It's called sardine salad and it's like a whipped cream and then sorry, Chuck is like salivating like That sounds amazing. What about you? What's your favorite enrichment story?
Man, I like so many of them. I like any anything with otters and texture I love we've seen I think some of it on tick tock otters putting their paws through like water otters using we call it clam smoothie, which is just frozen gland that we blend with water kind of smushed in and around giving them a bumpy toy just watching them get so excited over something that seems so simple, but it really is stimulating for them. And then probably the most recent fun, enrichment adventure we've had has been with our acids. So our our puffins are crested auklets and our pigeon guillemots. These are birds that are particularly picky about what goes into their exhibit.
Most of them are older too, right? So they're a little bit more set in their ways out that Parker vibe. Yeah, don't wake me up.
So we we have been slowly trying to introduce things. One thing we introduced was a rubber ducky, a large yellow rubber ducky just to see Puffin sized rubber rubber ducky. And oh boy. This is a good example of an ongoing adventure with them because their first response was either Absolutely not. Or like I will inch my way around it as like, as far as I can get away from it, that's where I'm gonna walk. But slowly, they're getting more used to it. And we've now we bought them a little floating island. Again, at first, they're like not gonna touch it not interested and just watching them slowly. Really start to utilize that. So now when you pass by the opposite exhibit, it's something you're gonna see a lot. It's attached with airline tubing, which is the kind of like clear tubing you might use in a fish tank. Way to down with a dive wait. Sometimes there's even some fish tucked into the airline tubing so that they can forage for fish mid water column supernatural behavior that we get to stimulate but watching those birds get more accustomed to seeing new things and hopefully watching them become more resilient has been really fun for me. Even when they're a little bit stressed. It's fun for me to watch them learn like I imagine I don't have kids and people with kids are probably gonna be like, nope, not like having a kid. But I really like watching them grow. It's really cool to watch them grow with these novel things. We can present them
and soon they'll accept the rubber ducky as their leader. Yeah.
One of them one of them needs a girlfriend.
Ducky she's one of them definitely
needs a partner. So that rubber ducky is about the right size. You never know it's about the right it's a little big you'll have to discuss it with agriculture is Yeah, I'm
pretty sure this Can we already have a sea turtle artificial girlfriend, she's gonna be great. We may as well have a productive artificial garden. And if you are ever walking by any of our exhibits, when you do visit the aquarium and you see something that looks out of place, chances are it is intentional and it is an attempt at enriching our animals lives and so if it's enriching you because you're stopping and being like what is a rubber ducky doing in here? That is also what the puffins are, is a rubber ducky doing in here and they're having the same reaction and hopefully they're getting something out of it? Yeah,
sometimes we will get concerned because I walked by our pet habitat and see those big five, five gallon water bottles, right? That's actually an enrichment device. That's something. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Oh, yeah, it's so cool. I want it sinks to the bottom, it is easy to be like plastic in the ocean. This is pollution. Yeah, it's not we promise, we take it out. But we we do remove it hard. A lot of the like hard plastic things you see are that material because it's easy for us to sanitize. And that's a high priority, we want to make sure everything is healthy. But that particular item, we will fill with fish and ice and a little bit of water. And then it floats at the surface. And what our sea lions have to do is kind of belly flop on top of it almost to start to force water into the small opening until it sinks enough that the fish start to come out. And we see a really positive foraging response with that object. It's one of the favorites in terms of like foraging devices that we present. Yeah,
they get excited. They get really excited. That's
awesome. Okay, and with that, I think we have a couple of questions from social media to ask you guys, do the animals get to pick their enrichment?
No. So we present them with different enrichments throughout their time here. But it's, well, I guess that's not entirely true. Sometimes you'll give them multiple enrichments at one time, and they get to choose which ones they want to play with and things like that. But the idea is to be changing it up all the time, so that they can use different aspects of their natural behavior. So if you always just have all the enrichment devices sitting right in front of them to choose, it's not really giving them enrichment. First, if that makes sense.
Also, sometimes we'll do tick tock lives and the audience will choose. For that that's really fun, especially if they're not fun or octopuses. And
even if they're not choosing the object, they're they're certainly having the opportunity to choose their response. Sure, do you need to participate? Yeah, if we provide something if we provide a new item for a macaw, and the macaque doesn't want to play with it, we're definitely not shoving it in their face, right? Trying to force it, they, they have the opportunity to interact with that object, you know, in the way that is reinforcing to them. So in that way, they have choice. And at least for sometimes we provide them with multiple options that can be really fun. Like, we can provide them with multiple food items, or multiple different types of toys or enrichment items, and it's cool to see which they pick. Otters are so easy to talk about, because they interact. So they interact so much with enrichment items, but they are a great one to kind of test out those types of theories, because they certainly have favorites when it comes to the objects that we present them. And if we present them three, there's often one, they're gonna be like that one. Yeah, it's my and
is it the same kind of thing where like, if they do have a favorite they go to every time are you maybe removing the favorite sometimes, so that way, they do have to switch it up? Yeah,
it's, it's, we definitely operate. Under the understanding that it is will eventually not be as interesting if it's always that. So we want it to be a treat, just I like with kids, sometimes, you know, you, you take a toy out of the rotation for a little bit. And then it's exciting. Again, when it comes back. We don't want it to just become we don't want it to become floating trash, we want it to be something that they are really interacting with. And using their time with.
When we had Ali, who is one of our sea otters that we historically had here. And she has since moved to a different institution is my favorite animal, her favorite enrichment device that she would interact with without fail, no matter how many times it was in, there was a hard orange ball that was about the size of like a tennis ball. And it was just a hard plastic ball. And it was so much her favorite. And she so much knew that we were going to remove it that she would hide it from us. So we would come in to change up the enrichment and that specific ball would just be nowhere to be found. And then we would come back later and it'd be in her pocket or should be hitting it on the window. And the minute you came around the corner, it was gone again. And you're like, Okay, and so they definitely do have favorites. And sometimes in rare cases, I'm guessing they don't ever really tire of favorites. But I guarantee that the times that we've taken it out, she's like, where's my thing? Like it's always in here that she gets to look for it. Yep. And then she's looking for it. And then the next time she sees it again, it's like this beautiful reunited, this orange ball. So it definitely, it depends heavily on the individual. But also Yeah, if they have it all the time, it almost becomes it can be a dependency almost rather than like I'm choosing this and I'm enjoying it. And so it's going to
ask like why wouldn't we just leave enrichment devices inside of the habitat? Is it for safety? Is it for same kind of thing like they would get used to it?
All the above? Yeah, for sure. I think some we rate all of our devices. Some of them are supervised only, which means somebody has to literally be standing there watching the animal with that item. Some of them have to be taken out before the last staff member leaves and then some of them we consider safe enough to just leave with that animal. But no matter
what we're watching usually depend on how destructive the animal is and how easily distractible the item is because it was dealing with the sea otters. It's hard to probably leave something in there long term because Oh totally at those tiny paws. Yes, Chuck teeth
and we look at the integrity of everything. When it does come out of the water. It's a good time to look at it and be like how many tooth marks can I find? We give our see our sea lions. These little toboggans, one of our sea lions came loves them. He tosses them in the air, which is a natural Sealine behavior when they're tearing at a prey item, maybe like an octopus. He'll play with it in the water column. I've seen him like, stick it onto the tunnel wall and it'll suction and then wow, like sitting there trying to figure out what happened. But when we pull those out, we will if they are damaged to a point that it would be dangerous. Time to replace it get
a new one for anyone. New toboggan. Oh, that's awesome.
Someone really wanted to know, but specific enrichment for both the octopus and the otters. We talked a lot about otter enrichment. But what are some of your favorite octopus enrichment?
Oh my goodness, there's so many um, I always like when they have to play with either a boat or submarine. So the Sumerians usually sink. And we usually we also have boats that float on the surface that are fully enclosed. So they're, they're like, children's bath toys is what they really are. That you can find them in our gift shop, I'm pretty sure. But the the octopus has to figure out how to open them. And it's so fun to watch them at the surface, sink these items and pull them all the way down. So that one's always fun. And then I also really liked when we and again, it depends on the octopus, because some of them will just won't even do this, we have a box that will suction either to the window or the wall. And we can put their food items in these Easter eggs and like kind of fill the box. Some of them have food, some of them don't. And it's them reaching in and pulling these different things out to open them. And then every once a while they're like climbing the box themselves. And they'll just like sit in there and then they'll climb out again. So those are always really cool.
That is awesome. No, kind of touching on that. Have the animals ever use any of the enrichment that you've presented to them in an unexpected way?
Yep. I would say that's definitely something that almost always
they're going to do. So I've seen a lot of hats. Yeah, a lot of things on top of heads and Millie's
little bracelet and Millie, one of our otters has this little ring that she wears as a bracelet all
the times posted a picture of it. It's real cute.
What phishing adverts are using their enrichment in unexpected ways.
His girlfriend's
ex girlfriends, friends will do these big ice cubes that are just full of different pieces of fish and squid and shrimp, throwing them into trap reef. The aim was to have that for the fish to pick at Copper has decided that that is his favorite thing. And like run away with it. Thanks, which is always interesting to see like you in a mixed species environment where you will give this enrichment device to something thinking is for one thing and some other animals like nah, this is gonna be mine.
That's amazing. So
during the pandemic, when we're close did we have to kind of increase our enrichment efforts, because I'm assuming that guests are also an enrichment for some animals, you know, the passing by the waving, sometimes we invite our guests to participate in enrichment activities. So we can have to increase our enrichment during or closures.
I think we did, in some ways. So some ways we did it actively in some ways we did it, probably without even realizing we were doing that. So also during COVID, all of our volunteers were no longer coming to the aquarium to help us with the animals, which includes our volunteer divers, so we had to do a lot more diving and it was at different times, we tried to keep it as consistent as possible for certain die feeds. So because animals, some animals are trained to go to certain stations during those times. But it would kind of vary with the times that we were diving and what we were doing so you know, volunteer divers, maybe like every Monday, some volunteer divers Meridian and trop reef. Well, we're not necessarily going to stick to that schedule, because we're trying to do so many other things. So it kind of without us even realizing we were doing it and mixed up the enrichment for these animals.
I remember the one that surprised me the most and made the biggest difference than they seem to have noticed the guests missing was the penguins. And I think that every day our colony of penguins would see so many guests coming by waving at them saying hi and you know it's an open air exhibit. penguins get basically full exposure to people just with a couple inches of acrylic between them. And then there was no people and the penguins got real weird. And they like you would be maybe 40 feet away, they would see you in the belly, Hey, come on. And they have this call, that's called a contact called, it's just, it's like one low sound that's like woo. And they would do it to you, if you were so far away, because people weren't walking by the exhibit anymore. And I think it was weird and jarring for them. And so we definitely started incorporating like, more sessions, or just sitting on the penguin beach with them and just having social hour with them and running back and forth at the windows. And in some ways, there were some things about being closed that allowed us to have that connection with the animals in a way that I think typically the guests do, and we missed out on but definitely they noticed and it was weird to like, all of a sudden, I'm the most interesting thing in this penguins life because they're used to, you know, 1000s of people seeing them every day. And then it was just me in the corner and they're like, Come, just come let's just come play.
I feel like that's on an animal that's super interactive with guests, but it is but then the lack of guests are just like, Wait,
what happened? And
they go, did you record it? Log in. Scroll back to 20.
I'm gonna say probably no, but I was better about records back then. So
we had a lot of staff in Richmond during that time because bird mammals were helping to feed tropical reef. At the surface is fish people started to learn how to feed the seals. It was a lot of fun.
We did take penguins on field trips around the Yeah, they weren't very fun.
And the program animals too. Yeah, they would go for walks around and say hi
to the different exhibits. See all the different animals.
Some of the birds through the tunnel and stuff was always cool.
We had a light during that time for sure. Lola who is either
on in a future episode or was already in a past episode. I can't tell what order we're in. But Lola, the sulphur crested cockatoo, went to go see the sea lions and he had Chase really connected and it was very cute. And it like it seemed like it almost clicked in his head that it was a sea lion because we had said it enough times. And he would just start like saying like, what's the sea lion say over and over? Chase and I was like, this is the cutest thing.
Just non stop. I love you. Yeah, it was really sweet. Um, what? I guess we kind of talked about what are some of the most creative enrichment activities you've been involved with? What would you say is kind of top tier
taught to you? Hi, oh, that's hard. Um, I think a lot of our training, we have to get pretty creative with target training and station training a lot of our animals. So there's a few different ways that we can do it, we do a lot of target training with our, I guess more iconic animals and animals that we really want to make sure we're getting certain diets instead of broadcast feeding, which is when we just kind of Chuck a bunch of fish into an exhibit for the other animals to eat. And that, especially when they're first learning those targets, you always have to be really creative about how you get them to associate with those targets and come over. And we've worked even with some of our smaller fish. So like one of our dogface puffer fish is so cute. I saw the fish getting target train to a little ring because he's just he's very shy. The other fish are much more aggressive in there. And they kind of take all the food when we do broadcast meetings where we're training him to come over and eat. I would say zebra sharks are like the easiest food, animals to train, like if you put an object in there and you're like the foods next to it. They're like cool. Got it. Yeah, I will always come to that. That's where my food. But like for copper, he started out in soft coral garden, we knew he was going to move into the larger side of trop reef. And so we did a couple different trainings. He had his target. And then he was also doing audio cues. So we actually had a metal pole that we hit three times three times in a row. Annabelle. Yeah. And so that's his audio cue to be like, Alright, I gotta go to my station. There's my target, I'm going and
that was in preparation for moving for moving him where he wouldn't be able to necessarily see based
right so if you sleeping at the bottom of Trump roof, which is 20 Something feet down. You can't see your target necessarily. So yep. I
I love the story of just the little dog face puffer who's just too shy to eat. And, you know, that means someone was watching the feed. Notice this animal wasn't getting enough food and then developed an entire strategy to make sure this individual animal and I'm sure a pretty large exhibit is able to eat like that's such a sweet story that someone was like I care about this animal getting enough food that we're now going to teach it to target, train and eat at this place. So all the other aggressive fish and like go eat somewhere else. This little shy guy over here. He's getting his own special dinner. He's getting his own little set up. And I think that's it really goes to shows sort of how much care and love goes into all of the animal care that we do here. Who
is designing the enrichment devices? Is it something we custom order? Are they available for everybody? And can the public suggest ideas? Or is it
Alex sewing something?
It's Amanda sewing things. She's another monologist here. Excellent. So we're, she's selling something for us right now. So sometimes we do make our own enrichment. It's all of the above. Sometimes we order it, there are companies that specialize in creating enrichment for animals that are living in Zoo and Aquarium settings. And sometimes, I think we've done public suggestions before too.
We've done like a wish list to choose from, and things like that.
And if you're in the sea lion tunnel interacting with Chase or any of our pinnipeds, you are participating in enrichment, and you really should be recording. Me and let me know,
you're gonna bring a little laptop and make every person Yeah.
Yeah, I've always heard if, if, during
the holiday season, we will periodically do our holiday gifts. And so if you do see anything about that, that typically means like, Hey, if you are interested in purchasing a toy for animals to utilize in some way, shape, or form, you are able to do that through a wish list. And it gets delivered here. And it is Christmas for us because we get to play with all the animals introduce new toys. And it is a really, really good time. And we really appreciate everyone who ever donates to the aquarium in any form, including toys for our animals. We had a guest who was very specifically interested in enrichment for sharks and rays. So aside from training, which we talked about, are there any enrichment devices that they engage with, or environmental cues that they really enjoy changing?
Yeah, so there's, there's kind of a few different things that we'll do. So they are definitely something animals that our target train, we also do what's called stretcher training for their sharks and some of our arrays as well, which is where they are trained to go into a stretcher, so that they're more comfortable with it when we have to do exams. So they each get yearly physicals. So we have to make sure that they are as comfortable as possible during those times. So we kind of will have either fake stretchers or we'll use their actual stretcher as a target that they swim through, or they have to lay on top of so their use of that material. And we'll also use their actual physical target to kind of lure them in to start with that. But it's always a positive reinforcement thing where you'll get tons of food and then they're like, Okay, this isn't so bad. We'll also specifically like Shark lagoon, and we'll move up those coral reefs that are in there. Those are all artificial coral reefs that we can move around all over the place. So we have large arrays in there we have our carpet sharks, which are zebra sharks. So it kind of changes where they lay in the exhibit. We I don't think we've started this yet. But I know other facilities have done it where it's it looks like a huge wiffle ball. But it's sturdier than that. And you can fill that with fish and different things that they'll they will actually push it around Oh, and force the fish to come out. We'll also try some like hard shelled items is really funny, hard shelled items, which for the rays or zebra sharks, so they have those question plates to mix up their enrichment. And like I said, before, we we've done jello with our sharks when we've done some of this more intense training and we don't want to just fatten them up with tons and tons of fish. So there's a lot of different things and mixing up their food even though they definitely have their favorites. usually want to go for that food. Like when we had big IR Sand Tiger, he would refuse pretty much everything except mullet. And the mullet had to be couldn't be a fillet. It had to be like the whole mall. And it had to be presented it to him in a very special way. If it wasn't right, or he didn't like it or he like got too close to the grabbers at that time, or one of the flagship scared away. He'd be like, Nah, I'm done for the day. I'll come back later.
That's a big guy.
He was such a sweet little gentleman, professional
shark for sure.
Cool. Well, that is basically all the questions we had from social media. But I guess my own personal question for both of you is sort of what do you foresee or hope to see the future of our enrichment program being and you can answer that however you feel like
I think enrichment is such a broad we've we started talking about how enrichment is such a broad topic and how I lay awake at night. I still will hope to sleep for one day. One day get going. But I just I think watching Seeing our team, develop new and different ways to stimulate our animals is so exciting. And I hope that more and more that becomes ingrained in what we do every day it already is. But I think sometimes people will get a look at enrichment and think it's something extra, like, Oh, this is just some a little treat for them or something like that, when in reality, that's not how we practice enrichment here, we really do provide it as a part of their daily well being or welfare. And I hope that we just keep doing that and it keeps getting more complex and we keep getting Parker off his butt into water.
Yeah, I kind of would just second all that. I just want this program to grow more and more and see what new things we can come up with. And I know other zoos and aquariums are always trying new things and just collaborating with them to come up with creative ways of getting these animals up and moving and thinking and doing different stuff. That's awesome.
Cool. Thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us all. today. We appreciate it. I was enriching.
Well, we're the same. I think the podcast has been staff enrichment for mostly myself and Madeline. I do think that like bringing a staff person in to just talk about an aspect of their job, hopefully is enrichment in a positive way and not the stress way. You never know but we do appreciate your time and it was a great conversation and we learned a lot.