Zoo Negara January 09


This month we had another UK group -4 English and one Scott! We even had a uniform after the group discovered these fetching shirts (right) in the local supermarket! One very dedicated volunteer Gillian Pirie (on the left in red) even fund raised to bring extra cash to benefit the apes. Some of this we spent at Zoo Negara, the rest Gillian took to Matang to put into the rehabilitation of animals there. Many thanks to Gillian!

Enrichment:
As well as the daily husbandry activities of cleaning out cages, raking the exhibits and preparing food, the group also took part in the following enrichment activities…..

• Leaf collecting: whenever they had time the volunteers collected leaves to give to the orangutans for them to both eat and make nests with.
• Smoothies: even varying the texture of food can create interest for the apes. The group used the blender donated by a previous group to blend bananas and papayas into a tasty smoothie!
• Happy sacks: stitching small amounts of food into hessian sacks the volunteers simulated more natural feeding by making the orangutans work for their food.
• Ice Blocks: chopped fruit and fruit juices were frozen to create tasty ice blocks including a big one to put in the Sumatran orangutan exhibit. Our huge male Sulong certainly enjoyed this refreshing treat (left).
• Bottle treats: Taking 1.5L water bottles the group put a few tit bits inside including honey raisins and flavourings, as well as leaves and sticks. Some of the apes got into these immediately by biting through the bottle, though young male Chokey was particularly smart and impressed the volunteers by filling his bottle with water then shaking it to get everything out!
• Ball cocks: we drilled holes in several ball cocks and put sunflower seeds and flavourings inside, before climbing up to wire them to the roof of Awang and Punkey’s exhibit. The idea behind this was to get them climbing and expending more energy and it work well, though poor Punkey was unable to bite into the hard plastic so settled for just hitting hers around until Awang opened them up and she could steal his rewards!
• Extra fruits: the group were awesome at going to the local night market and buying fruits to vary the orangutans’ diets. Among the tasty extras they bought were star fruit, water melon, corn on the cob, kiwi fruit and dragon fruit.

Construction
Spurred on by Gillian’s sponsoring of a hand drill and chain, the ape centre mobilised a group of staff to help drag a fallen tree into the chimpanzee exhibit. Using the hand drill the volunteers made holes all over the tree which had to be chopped into two pieces because of its size. For safety reasons they then stood back to watch as the zoo staff dragged the tree, first using a 4x4 then by hand into place inside the exhibit. Before letting the chimps out we placed sticky oats and honey mix into the holes to encourage them to forage around the tree.

Many many thanks to Emily, Emma, Gillian, Jayne and Ali (January team) for all their hard work and commitment. Want a piece of the action? Join our Orangutan Encounters today!