It took Honey B a few attempts to find the right strategy for this puzzle but she got there. The most clever – but ultimately unsuccessful – strategy was to hand everything through the food chute to a human. “Humans are good at this stuff,” she seemed to be saying. Either that or “You put it in here, you get it out!” But she didn’t need our help after all.
food puzzle
Willy B and his Dipper Tube
Willy B is quite the tool-user! As you can see, enrichment doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated to be effective.
It was a busy week for the block masons working on the new playrooms. You can see the walls taking shape now that the scaffolding has been taken down. Next week – fingers crossed – the roof goes on and we get ‘dried in’, so to speak. That should ensure that construction can continue even if the weather turns bad. This morning’s dreary snow/rain was an ominous start to the season.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ranch, the cows were thrilled to regain access to their winter pasture. I’ll have to share the video of them running through the fields in another post.
Burrito and his after dinner enrichment
The chimps are presented with different food puzzles each night before they settle down and make their nests. Volunteers placed peanuts and spoonfuls of peanut butter in cups and screwed them together in stacks. Burrito carefully unscrewed the cups from each other to find the treats but found it much easier to use his large, powerful canine teeth to rip off the lids – reminding us that an effective solution to a problem often looks different from a chimpanzee’s perspective.
Missy and the Kong toy
Missy seemed to be having a great time working on a food puzzle this morning. Chimpanzees engage in solitary play quite often, but I can’t remember seeing anyone smile so much in the process.
