Enrichment Day at the zoo

It’s Enrichment Day for the lions, tigers and bears at The Idaho Falls Zoo at Tauphas Park.
This is the day the public is invited to see what zookeepers do to help keep the animals entertained and mentally enriched in their enclosures.

Besides their daily routine of feeding and cleaning, zookeepers at The Idaho Falls Zoo spend time doing enrichment activities with the animals.

Darrell Markum, general curator, said, “All the things we do to enhance the lives of our animals and promote natural behaviors. So we do this every day but one day a year we set aside a special day to do enrichment all over the zoo with all of our animals.”

Each enrichment item is unique to each animal.

“We’ll have various animals getting their enrichment items, which may be toys, or special foods or puzzles things like that they can play with,” said Markum.

The monkeys were given shredded paper, the sloth bear had fruit and honey, and the lions-

“They’ve got big ice pops that are made out of blood drippings and little chunks of meat and frozen water. They’ll work on those all day,” Markum said.

All the lions love cardboard boxes.

Markum said, “Our keeper staff are the ones that do all the enrichment and they do a great job of that.”

Keeper Amy Vargas, who works with the penguins, said her favorite enrichment activity is taking penguins out to meet the guests.

Overall, it’s a chance for guests to see the dedication keepers have to the animals.

The zookeepers said the lions are the most vocal in the morning. So if you want to hear them roar, be there earlier in the day.