(Spectrum News/Ashley Carter)Īnimal enrichment is a big undertaking at the park, with animal care cast members in multiple departments working with each other to find new ways to keep the animals active and engaged. Putting presents around the gorilla habitat allows them to forage for food like they would in the wild, or the gorillas will use their climbing abilities to reach the presents placed in the trees.Īnimal enrichment items on display at Disney's Animal Kingdom. And they all get some form of enrichment - activities or items that seek to trigger natural behaviors in the animals. They are part of a larger enrichment program at the park.Īnimal Kingdom is home to tens of thousand of animals - big and small. The wrapped packages and the blankets are more than just gifts for the gorillas. We can use them for medical procedures to provide them comfort, something soft while they recovery.” “For our gorillas, they’ll get these sheets to cover themselves,” said Angela Levanik, an animal keeper at the park. Some used the sheets as covers for their heads - it was a chilly morning - while others used them like a picnic blanket for their food. Even the wrapping paper that was ripped apart to retrieve the food was edible.ĭisney did something similar for the Galapagos tortoises in October, treating them to pumpkins just in time for Halloween.Īcross the way, animal keepers gave the bachelor troop of gorillas in the habitat white sheets to play with. Inside each present was an edible treat-popcorn, oats, alfalfa, hay and more. Presents in trees, requiring the gorillas to use their climbing skills to reach. On a cool morning earlier this month, the gorillas celebrated with dozens of brightly wrapped presents.Īs they entered their habitat, they found presents on the ground. The enrichment is designed to encourage natural behaviors in the animals.A water jug can become a feeder for warthogs, or the team can go high-tech and create a motorized cheetah ball using a 3D printer.The animal care team gets creative with the items they create for the animals, sometimes using simple items to make a device.Experts say enrichment is an important part of caring for animals at Disney's Animal Kingdom.Lastly, I found a CalTrans logo on the web, printed it out and glued it on the front of the costume for that extra bit of authenticity and recognizable. Each time he wore the costume we had to tape him into it - the back seam area had an extra tape layer to make the subsequent layers of tape easily removable. And I cut a little bit of the cone away right under his chin so it wouldn’t stick him in the face. Unfortunately the poster board was not big enough to fashion a complete cone, so I did have to use some scrap poster board pieces at the bottom back to make the body wide enough to fit correctly.īoth hat and body pieces are completely covered on the inside with clear packing tape for added strength and pliability. The same general idea was used to create the body and even more trial and error to get it to fit over his shoulders and body. I used the hat as a template for cutting the holographic sticker paper border and a hole punch for attachment points for the ribbon. I began by making a template out of newspaper (using our actual cone as a form) for the hat, it took some trial and error (and some high school geometry/trigonometry) to get the fit right. I got the orange poster board (2 sheets), holographic sticker paper (4 sheets) and orange ribbon at the craft/fabric store and the orange onesie at Target (already had the grey construction PJs). I knew immediately that I would make a “dunce-like” hat for the top piece, the body piece would have arm holes and he’d wear an orange onesie. I wanted something relatively easy to make and upon seeing an actual traffic cone in our garage it dawned on me that here was my answer to a Homemade Traffic Cone Toddler Halloween Costume. My 4.5 year old son had decided to be a backhoe for Halloween, so I had to come up with a “sidekick” costume for my 11 month old.
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