Animal Enrichment
Sea otters forage for tasty treats. Crabs claw at a feeder ball. Sea lions munch on ice. And with a simple hand cue, a 2,100-pound beluga whale positions itself for an exam. These scenes — and more — happen at the aquarium every day, part of our extensive animal wellbeing program.
Animal Enrichment
Sea otters forage for tasty treats. Crabs claw at a feeder ball. Sea lions munch on ice. And with a simple hand cue, a 2,100-pound beluga whale positions itself for an exam. These scenes — and more — happen at the aquarium every day, part of our extensive animal wellbeing program.
What is Animal Enrichment?
Enrichment provides an animal with opportunities for mental stimulation and physical activity, as well as encourages and complements unique behaviors and adaptations. Enrichment also gives an animal choice, control and variety in their environment, and is an important component of enhancing an animal's overall wellbeing. Enrichment is different and varied for every animal. It can simply provide variety in an animal's day, invoke physical activity, or encourage natural behaviors.
Behavior-Based Enrichment
Shedd’s Animal Care Team uses their extensive knowledge of animal biology, social structures and cognitive needs, as well as their strong relationships with individuals, to develop tailor-made enrichment programs for aquatic animals of all kinds, from sea stars to stingrays.
They establish behavioral goals for each animal and then design creative and stimulating enrichment to achieve those goals. Examples of behaviors that caretakers might want to see include locomotion (movement), resting or hiding, hunting or foraging, working cooperatively, grooming, manipulating items and more.
Once the Animal Care Team implements the enrichment, they closely observe and keep records on how the animals interact with it to see how effective it is. If needed, they evaluate and adjust the enrichment or goals themselves for the wellbeing of each animal.
Types of Animal Enrichment
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Objects encourage animals to play and manipulate items. Objects and food are often combined for a plethora of new play opportunities.
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Changing an animal's habitat encourages them to interact differently with their surroundings.
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Cognitive enrichment empowers animals to think, learn and flex their mental muscles through problem-solving or conquering new challenges. Foraging for food or manipulating a puzzle can be mentally stimulating.
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Novel scents, sights and sounds motivate an animal to navigate and explore their environment in new ways.
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Food-related enrichment provides variety in an animal's diet and encourages natural behaviors like hunting.
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Providing opportunities for social interactions can provide variety and promote positive social behaviors.
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Training sessions build a trusting relationship between animals and their caretakers. With each session different from the next, sessions offer mental stimulation and physical exercise and allow caretakers to assess an animal's health and wellbeing at that moment.
Incorporating Positive Reinforcement in Training
After successfully completing a requested behavior in a training session, an animal like a sea lion might receive a tasty fish to encourage that behavior in the future, a method called positive reinforcement. Those positive interactions build connections and a trusting relationship between the animals and the people who care for them.
Through positive reinforcement, animals also learn and practice behaviors that help them participate in their own health care. By familiarizing the animals with the activities and sensations of eye exams, blood draws and ultrasound scans, these and other procedures can be carried out safely and efficiently, whether it’s for a checkup or urgent care.
Diving into Enrichment at Shedd Aquarium
You can see enrichment in all its forms in habitats across the aquarium, so dive into just some of the many examples of what enrichment might look like for species here at Shedd.
Beluga Whales
The beluga whales are offered many forms of enrichment throughout the day, and guests can occasionally watch their training sessions in the Abbott Oceanarium. Each session is different, providing every whale with choice to participate in physical and mental activities while also strengthening the relationship between caretaker and animal and ensuring that the belugas can cooperate in their own care.
Sea Otters
With their sharp teeth and dexterous paws, the sea otters at Shedd are known for being the toughest on object enrichment items, keeping the Animal Care team on their toes to find durable solutions. The otters are regularly offered food enrichment like whole crabs, clams and mussels. If their bite can't break through the fortified shells, they have to figure out the best way to break open the crustaceans to get to the tasty meat inside.
Giant Pacific Octopus
Giant Pacific octopuses are incredibly intelligent, so aquarists provide Shedd’s resident octopus with enrichment that is mentally stimulating and sometimes challenging to accomplish. One example is a "prey puzzle" — a container that the animal must take apart to get the food inside. Watch the video to see how octopus enrichment encourages foraging behaviors.
Green Sea Turtle
Nickel the green sea turtle’s care team comes up with creative ideas to keep this massive turtle moving throughout her habitat. The team will sink a head of lettuce to the bottom to imitate feeding from seagrass on the ocean floor like her wild sea turtle counterparts. They will also stuff lettuce in pieces of durable fire hose or other innovative feeders at different depths to keep Nickel active and healthy.
Penguins
Rockhopper penguins Wellington, Edward and Annie may have made penguin field trips famous, but walks through the aquarium are a valuable form of enrichment for the entire penguin colony at Shedd! Both the rockhopper and Magellanic penguins, if they choose to participate, will occasionally venture to other areas of the aquarium, visit special events or participate in a Penguin Encounter for exercise and variety. In their habitat, the penguins engage with waterfalls that encourage them to preen, which means to smooth out and waterproof their feathers, as well as many other forms of enrichment.
Fishes and Amphibians
Fishes and amphibians need enrichment, too! To provide variety, encourage natural behaviors and physical and mental activity, aquarists can feed fishes and amphibians at different times of the day, feed from different areas of the habitat or put food in various items like feeder balls, add currents to the habitat, move or add plants and places to hide and more.
Measuring Animal Wellbeing
As a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), animal wellbeing is central to everything we do. We believe that the wellbeing of the animals in our care is both our moral responsibility and foundational to our mission.
We are committed to providing the highest standards of care for the animals at the aquarium and to invest in and take action to promote the wellbeing of animals. This commitment and drive for continuous improvement has been the catalyst to participate in global research efforts to better understand marine mammals, as well as proactively inviting external partners to objectively assess the wellbeing of dolphins and belugas at Shedd.