Hey guys, I'm Jessi from Animal Wonders.  We've talked about behavioral enrichment before and we've also talked about our Amazon wish list where we get toys to give the animals.  Well, today, we're going to get those toys and give them to the animals.  

(Intro)

We get lots of stuff from our Amazon wish list like vitamin C and critical care, which is ground up hay to give sick animals.  We also get things like bird toys and fun furniture for the animals.  So what prompted me to do this unscripted episode was we got this as a gift and I'm really excited to see what the foxes do with it so let's go do that.

Okay, so the concept here is that we give them treats, we put them in here, and then hide them.  I'm going to put a couple just right in the open so they get the idea that there are treats here.  Here we go.  Hey, Sera.  What do you think?  Hah!  She got it on the first try.  Oh my.  You are too smart.  I didn't even need to have the cheater ones.  Can you move the other ones?  You smell it.  You gotta work a little bit harder for those other ones.  Right now, she's getting frustrated, which is actually an okay thing.  I don't wanna help her.  Ah!  See!  Look, she used that frustration to, to try a little bit harder.  

Behavioral enrichment is there to stimulate natural behaviors so right now, she would be searching for food so that's what she needs to do.  It's not me, you know, going there and showing her exactly how to do it.  Oh, you tell him.  You are so typical red fox.  They're very curious but they're also fearful.  Oh, look.  She can smell it in there.  Yeah!  Good work.  You did very good.  You smart girl.  This would actually be behavioral enrichment as well, tactile interaction and social interaction.  

Alright, so we did a refill and I've locked Sera off and got Cas because Sera was being a little bit too possessive of this so let's see what Cas wants to do with it.  Cas is a little bit more wary.  He's nervous of the camera and also a new item in his home.  He's checking it out.  He got that easy one.  Let's see what he does with that.  

So behavioral enrichment has to kind of cater to the individual animal as well as species.  You can really see the difference between these two foxes' personalities.  I mean, they are different species but just their personalities are so night and day.  Sera just goes all out and gets them as fast as you can and Cas is just methodically smelling.  

So as behavioral enrichment goes, this was pretty good.  It did get them both thinking, but it didn't last as long as I was hoping it would.  I like behavioral enrichment to maybe last, you know, 20 minutes to 60 minutes would be ideal, but uh, next time, I can not give him any little cheats and close all the little compartments completely.

We also got this piece of wood.  Now, a piece of wood might not be very interesting to us, but it's great behavioral enrichment for reptiles, so I've got both tortoises here and we're gonna see what they think about this.  They've both spotted it.  Yucca doesn't seem to care and Titus thinks it's just in his way.  

Now, sometimes you give an animal something and they don't seem very interested in it, which is fine.  You can always give it to another animal or you can try and change it up a bit.  Now, I know the tortoises love food.  You can see she's already perking up here.  What if I dress this up 'cause it's got some great holes here.  What if I dress this up with little pieces of cilantro and see how she likes that?  It's a new way to distribute her food.  Yeah.  Then instead of just being laid in a bowl, she has to maneuver around and figure out how to get to it.  

So not a lot of action, but they are tortoises after all.  You know, I'm gonna leave this in here for probably a week or so and see how much interaction they do have with it and if they like it, then I'll leave it in there, but if they don't really interact with it much, I'll go ahead and give it to another animal.

Alright, now we have some more fun interactive toys and we're gonna see what the cavies do with these guys.  Hi.  How's it going?  Look, I brought you a grass hut and a tiny little tunnel.  There ya go.  Yeah.  That's fun to chew on.  That is perfect natural behavior for cavies.  Go and smell it and then chew on it, see if it tastes good.  

So what I like about this grass hut is that not only is it nice to chew on, they can rip it apart if they want to, but they can also use it as a hide and you can see one of the baby guinea pigs is hiding out in there right now.  Can you see her?  

We also recently got this awesome wooden house hut thing and these guys love it.  Olive, it's her favorite place to be.  You can see that they've chewed on it in multiple places and she loves it.  I love giving these guys all these different things to play with.

If you guys would like to give the animals some toys or anything else, check out our Amazon wish list and maybe you'll get to see these guys playing with the one that you've donated.

Thanks for joining us.  I hope you enjoyed watching the animals enjoy themselves.  If you would like to go on an adventure with us every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel AnimalWondersMontana.  Thanks, and see you next week.

(Outro/Credits)

A big fluffy blanket, which, you can see he spent a lot of time in.  A soft billowy cat bed which he's ripped most of the stuffing out of, but he still curls up inside of it anyway.