Enrichment Matters

08/15/2026

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08/13/2026

Setting up interesting, species-relevant environments is critical to animal wellbeing. We are happy to host Rick Hester, Director of Animal Care and Wellbeing, at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and member of Behavior Works faculty at this workshop in September to talk about freeing up the operants in animal habitats. This means creating environments rich in reinforcement and behavioral opportunity. Several horse trainers will be in attendance as well as shelter workers. If you work with group-housed animals of any species, this talk is for you. The others are relevant to what you do as well. And, if you can join us, you can practice your R+ training skills with animals and PORTL play. Learn more via the link in the comments.

08/11/2026

Great info.

🐴 If we give horses more space, will they actually move more? | ISES 2026

At the ISES 2026 Conference, Miriam Baumgartner presented “What makes horses move? How housing design, management, and environment shape locomotion.”

Researchers followed groups of mares over 14 months, collecting GPS data from more than 1,700 horse days to investigate what really influences daily movement.

The results showed that movement was shaped strongly by the horses’ environment and management. Horses moved more in warmer conditions and when pasture was available, while rainfall and muddy surfaces reduced movement.

One particularly interesting finding came when a muddy section of trail became difficult to use. When researchers introduced a detour, the horses immediately began moving more. When the detour was later closed, movement dropped again.

Day to day conditions also explained far more variation in movement than differences between individual horses.

The message? Designing for movement is about more than providing space. Routes need to be functional, comfortable and meaningful for horses to actually choose to use them.

08/11/2026

I’d interpret this behavior as sharks having more functions to their behavior than previously thought, in this case sensory stimulation and access to tangibles (eg, toys). They don’t just swim with no purpose to their behavior. They interact with their environment as all creatures do. In a limited environment such as an aquarium, toys can serve those functions. In the open ocean, it’s likely other stimuli that serve those functions.

07/26/2026

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One thing trainers should always consider is including an enrichment idea or few for animal guardians to implement with their animals with their training work. Making sure animals' behavioral needs are met helps to meet training goals in my experience.

It's all behavior. The animals need to behave and we need to help them do that in ways that are healthy for them. Try to find boarding and training facilities where the training and care is about meeting the animals' needs as much as the humans'.

I've been at horse boarding facilities where the bedding is thin, yet research indicates horses rest more when provided with deep bedding and bedding that includes straw. I've also encountered horse barns that would not allow growing or providing certain plants as forage-based enrichment because the humans perceived the plants themselves or the ways in which they would be grown as problems. When I worked in a zoo, one keeper didn't want to provide enrichment for animals at night because it was an effort to clean it up in the morning.

These kinds of problems need to be worked through. Refusing to provide enrichment to human-housed animals (all of them) does not make for optimum welfare.

Link to article on benefits of deep bedding for horses in the comments.

Photo of a wheelbarrow full of enrichment-related items for our mini horse enclosure: scents to spray, rose bush forage and hay balls to place around their pen, a cup of hay pellets to scatter.

06/15/2026

Empowering Enrichment:

From conference inspiration to real-world implementation, the staff at the Carlisle Raptor Center transformed ideas from this year’s conference into new enrichment opportunities for our corvids.

By creating enrichment beds filled with diverse natural items and other enrichment, the team has provided engaging mental and physical stimulation that encourages natural behaviors such as exploration, problem- solving, and foraging. These additions have been a success not only for the birds, but also for visitors to our Center, who now have even more opportunities to observe these intelligent species exhibiting behaviors they would naturally display in the wild.

05/26/2026

03/07/2026

Enrichment should have a behavioral goal. One that is important to the species' behavioral repertoire in the wild or needed for a specific individual and in accordance with species needs. For example, trainers at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo years ago taught their gibbons to brachiate, or move from branch to branch using their arms. This is a behavior observed in wild populations that their individuals weren't doing or weren't doing very much. So, they taught them. This was an overlap of training and enrichment with a specific behavioral goal that would add to "natural" behavioral variation in their animals.

See a related video linked in the comments.

02/23/2026

What a great idea.

02/14/2026

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