Animals at Singapore Zoo benefit from enrichment programme

Elephants and orang utans are among the animals getting a mental lift at the Singapore Zoo.

The keepers at the zoo are running a programme to help the animals stay sharp and experience situations that they would in the wild.

Polar bears Sheba and Inuka are residents at Singapore Zoo, but life can get a bit boring in their small enclosure, so keepers have been feeding the bears food in blocks of ice, so they've got to use their wits to break the ice and get at the food. (Both maybe transferred soon)

The idea of the enrichment programme is to stimulate the animals brains.

For the orang utans, the keepers have designed a task for them to get fruit out of a box.

The apes have to push the fruit through a tunnel to the other side before they get their reward.

For the elephants, life is a little different. When the elephants are idle, the keepers say they can begin to show neurotic behaviour like shaking their heads and bodies.

To combat this, the keepers get the elephants to play games, such as knocking a barrel filled with fruit until the fruit comes out, or blowing fruit out of a tree trunk.

The keepers are confident the programme works.

"We can also see the animals display, they move around a lot they seem to be enjoying their environment. But if you think the animal is not enjoying it most of the time the animal sits alone in a corner and they look at bit depressed," said Sam Chellaiyah, curator, Singapore Zoo.

The monkeys have to figure out how to get the fruit from the barrel as part of the programme which has been refined over 30 years.

"In a way we actually try to improve the ideas as we go along. Basically enrichment is trial and error especially for new devices, some devices work and some don't," said Diana Marlena, enrichment officer, Singapore Zoo.

The keepers say the enrichment goes a long way to keeping the animals alert and happy.