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Indiana
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Training Penguins to Interact with Enrichment
Items for Lasting Effects
Over the past several decades, zoos have begun to focus more on the use of environmental enrichment to promote the “well-being” of their animals, (Markowitz and Aday, 1998). The past few decades have also seen a dramatic increase in the application of behavioral training techniques with captive animals in zoos. However, while training itself has been talked about as an effective enrichment strategy (Laule & Desmond, 1998), little has been done to manipulate the effectiveness of specific enrichment items through training. In many cases, whether or not an animal interacts with some item is all that is observed or documented. If an item is not interacted with, multiple items or other procedures might be continually tried until some item or other procedure is found that works. Our current study examined the possibility of combining training and enrichment to produce continued interactions with an enrichment item. 2 species of penguin, magellanic (Spheniscus magellanicus) and rockhoppers (Eudyptes crestata) located at the Cincinatti Zoo were used in the study. 2 measures were taken: whether a penguin was swimming or not swimming, and the continuous number of hits by a beak to each enrichment item. 2 different colored hamster balls were introduced as the enrichment items, and were manipulated by placing smelt (a small fish) within and hanging out of each ball. During baseline sessions, no hits to either item were observed. During training sessions with and without smelt in the balls, several hits were recorded when smelt were in the balls, and overall swimming time increased during the training times. When baseline was reintroduced without smelt in the balls, little interaction with the enrichment items was observed, and swimming time for most of the penguins decreased. When the balls were re-introduced with smelt but without training, the highest number of interactions and largest percentage of time spent swimming were observed for the rockhoppers. The combination of training with enrichment item manipulation was able to generate long-lasting effects to the enrichment item in later periods without training. We're currently in the process of writing up these results, and developing a similar procedure to be used with other species of penguins: Little Blue penguins (Eudyptula minor) and African penguins (Spheniscus demersus).
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