Brief description: A variety of treats are put into buckets, which are placed outside the caging. The chimpanzees are provided with tools to allow them to knock over the buckets and access the treats inside, or to use as straws to drink from the buckets (if filled with liquid).
Materials: small (~ 1 gallon) buckets, bamboo sticks, long plastic straws, kraft paper, fabric pieces
Assembly instructions: There are a variety of way to prepare these buckets.
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- Option 1: place a small handful of a mix of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, add some fabric pieces over them.
- Option 2: Add some fabric pieces to the buckets, then a few raisins, small pieces of dried fruit, and one large nut.
- Option 3: Add a few slices of lemons, limes, or other cup up pieces of fruit to the buckets and fill them halfway full with water.
- Option 4: Fill each bucket halfway with water and add a small amount of gatorade mix to make dilute juice.
How to use: Prepare buckets as desired, then place outside of caging within reach of chimpanzees with the use of their tools. Hand out tools to be used by chimpanzees to access the buckets. The chimpanzees may use their tools to knock over the buckets and then retrieve the treats off of the ground outside of the caging.
Price: We use the tubs our peanut butter comes in for these buckets, so there is a possibility to reuse materials. We also use durable buckets that can also go inside the caging for other uses, which cost about $20 and include other plastic toys. A link to these buckets can be found here.
