We are always trying to come up with fun and interesting ideas to enrich the chimpanzees at CSNW. Since today is April Fool’s Day, I was coming up with ways to mix things up for the chimps. We tried to serve lunch at breakfast, which didn’t seem to go over as well as I had thought—the chimps were expecting fruit smoothie! So we made up for that faux pas by doing a smoothie forage.
While Elizabeth and I were setting up the smoothie cups, we were trying to come up with “jokes” to play with the enrichment. We decided to put all their toys for the day inside an old trash can, and “leave behind” some things we normally don’t let the chimps have. We left a disinfectant container (with tea instead of disinfectant of course) and a gum container with just a couple pieces of gum in it, plus some kitchen utensils and other chimp-safe things we could find. This part of the day’s enrichment went much better than the first April Fool’s joke we played on the chimps! They loved it.
Jamie was the first to open the trash can of enrichment, and Annie was very interested, too.
Foxie:
Missy:
Jody found the “disinfectant” tea first:
And Jamie also took an interest:
