animal enrichment

Over Easter, Thailand has celebrated Thai New Year. This festival involves a lot of water – appropriate as April is supposedly the hottest month in Thailand!

Elephants love water and the entire elephant community throw themselves exuberantly into the festivities.

This is certainly an optimistic season for the elephant village I visit regularly. The mahouts recently moved into brand new accommodation. I’m visiting in July and looking forward to viewing the changes first-hand.

If Songkran looks a little ‘full-on’ for you I will be offering a (slightly more) sedate opportunity to join the locals in October/November 2017. Loy Krathong rejoices in the end of the rainy season and the sense of renewal that brings…think lanterns and floating flower offerings instead of water fights!

As usual, this visit to Thailand will focus on elephants…rewarding you with the opportunity to live in a village dedicated to the continuation of this remarkable species in an ever-changing world.

You will enjoy an extremely hands-on experience working hard to ensure the ‘retired’ elephant in your care benefits from your hard work…think a little boot camp/maximum fun…giving you a wonderful chance to live and learn about elephants in human care.

Visit www.elephant-encounters.com for more information.

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The basics of life are food, water and shelter. Everything else is a bonus. In the animal care world we call that Enrichment – used to improve the quality of life; providing stimulation of some kind perhaps physical, mental and/or social.

On Saturday, Jane (a dedicated elephant keeper) showed me a very impressive structure in San Diego’s Elephant paddock providing all that!

The ‘Tree’ has rough concrete sides for the elephants to rub against (exfoliation is top priority for pachyderms), there are mesh cages in the sides where hay and other food can be inserted. On top you can see there’s shade. There’s also winches on timers so that hay bags etc can be filled early in the day and timed to drop down at intervals for perhaps 15 minutes at a time. Fabulous…encouraging elephants to think, plan and move around to get their food!