How Do Our Petting Zoo Animals Celebrate Fall?

Our staff in the Creation Museum petting zoo love to incorporate aspects of each season into enrichment activities for our animals. The fall months are no different. Here are three aspects of fall that our animals enjoy.

Apples

Our zookeepers use apples in a variety of ways for enrichment purposes. They filled a swimming pool with water and dumped apples in to let our miniature steers, alpacas, and donkey “bob” for apples. George took bobbing for apples very seriously as you can see from this photo!

Apples and apple pieces are also placed inside pumpkins for our animals to find as they roll and toss them around in their exhibits. You can learn more about how our zookeepers use pumpkins below.

Pumpkins

Our zookeepers also use pumpkins during their fall enrichment activities. The pumpkins were filled with cut-up treats for the animals, such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and apples. Many of our animals enjoy rolling the pumpkins around until they get their treats out, and some of them even eat the pumpkins as well!

Our coatis recently received a pumpkin that was filled with molasses, live crickets, and mealworms. Doesn't that sound yummy?!

Leaves

Our goats are very curious creatures, so our zookeepers hide some snacks for them inside piles of leaves. Working to find their carrots and the small pumpkins within the leaves is a good way to stimulate their brains.

Our wallabies love eating the leaves as well. Below you can see them enjoying the leaves from bamboo branches placed in cute pumpkin holders.

To see these different enrichment activities in action, check out this video:

Keep an eye out for these fall enrichment activities at the petting zoo when you visit the Creation Museum. Share your favorite pictures of our animals on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using #creationmuseum.