Panda Updates – Friday, December 1

One of our daily goals as animal care professionals is to provide enrichment for the animals. Enrichment is meant to stimulate the animal’s minds, offer the animal something new, and/or elicit natural behaviors, like foraging. Recently we offered Yang Yang and Lun Lun their produce and some leafeater biscuit powder that we mixed with a little water and froze in a Bundt cake pan. For Yang Yang, we spread all of these items in a pile of ice. Not only did Yang Yang get something new, but he also had to dig around and figure out how to retrieve his produce from the ice. He ate all of the produce first and saved the Bundt cake-shaped biscuit for last (probably because he wasn’t sure what it was!). He spent a long time eating the super-sized biscuit and he really did seem to enjoy it.
Heather R.
Senior Keeper, Carnivores