Week 3 at National Zoological Park (Richard)

This week has been extremely packed but exciting! I started the week helping organize the morning tours and brainstorming ideas for our next couple of facebook live broadcasts. The one from this week was on Aldabra Tortoises and next week will be on orangutans, so tune in if you want to see me make some crafts!

During the middle of the week I proof-read one of the textbooks that the zoo was going to release and it was a long one, so that took a while. But one of the coolest things I did was take pictures of some of the interpreter items and upload them to the training website. The interpreter items are artifacts that the interpreters (people who talk about the animals) use in order to engage with the public. This can be anything from pictures, to pelts, to actual animal skulls! I got to handle these and it was the coolest thing! 

The awesome thing that happened this week was that the team organized a behind-the-scenes tour of the small mammal house for the interns and volunteers. So I got to see up close and touch cute skunks, tenrics, meerkats, and naked mole rats. I followed that up with a story time at the kids farm like last week. While there was only one kid, he was super engaged and I read the story to him multiple times. The picture below however is from last week's story time. 


And today I made papier mache objects as enrichment for the animals for the upcoming enrichment day event. Enrichment is any stimulus or object that the zookeepers will give to the animals in order to encourage their natural instincts in the enclosures. It is really important to the animals' health to have these enrichment items/activities so they can use their natural instincts. The papier mache is going to have sweet foods that the animals like and encourage them to rip the objects apart and find their own unique ways of getting the food. 



I can't believe next week is my last week, but I am excited to go and make the most of it!

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