Awesome.  Ooh.  This is neat.  This says Mimi on it and it looks like this might be able to be attached to the cage or I can hang it and it looks like I can put little treats in there.  That's super cute.  There's little holes in here, so maybe this is a mealworm dispener and I could hang that up and then she has to reach through and get the mealworms on the bottom.  We'll see if that works!  

We have a little grab bag for Huckleberry the beaver with some cute little wooden blocks for him to play with.  Oh, these are super cute.  They're like little dominoes.  Aw, he loves wood so much.  This goes to Cheerio.  Cheerio is a chinchilla and this is a cute little place that we could hide some treats in.  I will have to take the tape off because chinchillas cannot get plastic or tape 'cause they will chew on it and it'll hurt them, but we can rig this up so it's good for her.  

Looks like we have a little chew toy for Chili Pepper the Patagonian cavy and another one for Huckleberry.  Again, we'll have to get rid of the tape on there, but we can definitely use the wood and Rook the raven is going to love this.  She loves beads and she doesn't really eat the beads, she just really likes to play with them and we have another one for Cayenne who's also a Patagonian cavy, that's Chili Pepper's best bud and I bet the guinea pigs are also going to play with these.  

I wonder if Zeema will like this.  What do you think?  Ohh, you're super interested in it.  What do you think?  Ohh, she's getting it.  Get it, get it!  Is that fun?  It's not edible.  Would you rather have a blueberry?  She's like, yes.  Blueberries are better.  Thank you, Maxine!  These are amazing homemade gifts.  Thank you so much.  

I have one more package.

It's a bigger one.  It comes from Ariella and Jennifer.  What's in here?  (?~4:08) Let's see.  Oh, that's cute.  There's a little bunny and on this side it says, "Dear Animal Wonders, Thanks for all you do.  We love your animals and you.  Here are some gifts for everyone.  From Ariella and Jennifer, aka Mama.  Hope they are useful and the animals enjoy them.  Thanks again for the love and care you give the animals."  Thank you guys.

Alright, let's see what they got.  Ohh.  These are always welcome.  The animals love chewing on these, especially the guinea pigs and more chew toys!  It looks like you guys know the animals like to chew on things, and another fun chew toy.  Man, what is this?  This is gonna be really fun.  The cavies, the Patagonian cavies and the guinea pigs, they lay on fleece blankets like this, but they also do chew on it a bit, and so these are gonna be really fun for them to chew on.  This might be also fun for Mimi to climb on as well, so we have plenty of them to go around.  Thank you so much, Ariella and Jennifer.

Alright, let's go have fun with the animals.  Zeema, this is where you have to go back home because I don't think you're gonna like Huckleberry very much.

This is the gift from Maxine and I modified it a little bit to make sure that it was appropriate for Mimi, so I took off some of the tape and I put a stronger different kind of tape on there and I put something that I could attach to her bars right here and then I also added a little lid here so she doesn't just look in and see the mealworms in there.  That closes down and so she has to wait for the mealworms to come out the bottom, OR she's smart and she figures out that she can pop the lid open.  

As you can see, we have a lot of toys in there for Mimi and that's because she requires a lot of enrichment, and enrichment is going to stimulate her mentally and physically.

In the wild, black tufted marmosets like Mimi would be living up in the trees down in South America and they're constantly moving and foraging and just having fun, so providing her with enrichment is super important.  Now, enrichment can be anything that's stimulating, so it can be things that she climbs on, it can be things that she looks at or hears, or a foraging item like this. 

When you make enrichment, sometimes you have a vision of how the animal's gonna interact with it, and then they do something completely different and that is totally okay.  As long as they interact with it somehow, then you've succeeded.  

Now, when people see Mimi, a lot of people will think that they make good pets and that's the problem.  So the reason that monkeys don't make good pets is because they require so much specific care and they really do best with other monkeys.  Oh, she figured it out!  Look at you!  

The reason that Mimi does not have any other marmosets with her is because someone tried to make her a pet and then they had her until she was an adult with not good interaction with others of her kind, and so once they become an adult and they don't have good social interactions with their own kind, it makes it incredibly challenging to introduce them later in life, so the consensus with all of my primate experts is that it is very unlikely that she would be able to be compatible with another of her kind, which is why enrichment is so incredibly important for her.

So if you have that urge to want one as a pet, what I would recommend is get a marmoset stuffed animal so you can cuddle it, and then get a dog or a cat so you can cuddle them, and then you'll have the best of both worlds.  

Okay, Mimi, I'm going to let you explore that some more, and we're gonna go hang out with another animal.  

We're here at Tickles the hedgehog's home and she's sleeping but she actually just woke up because she heard us talking, but I have this cute little hut made by Avery and what I've done is I have put some little treats in the bottom of this, some mealworms and some, a little bit of pear, and I've covered it up with some shredded cardboard so she has to forage for it.

Now, she might not do this because hedgehogs are nocturnal, but let's put this in there and see if she wants to join us.  She's under here all cozied up in her blanket, so you can see her little fleece.  Hi, pretty girl.  Do you wanna come say hi to everyone?  Hello.  Look at your awesome self.  Can you smell?  Look at her nose going.  I love how much their nose moves when they're interested in something.  She's also licking her lips.  

Tickles is nocturnal, so waking up in the middle of the day is not her favorite thing, but we do do some interactions.  She is an ambassador animal and so she does come out during the day and we share her with classrooms and audiences to teach about hedgehogs.  Alright, pretty girl, now that you've smelled it, you're probably gonna go back to sleep, but let's get go check another animal out.

This gift is from Maxine and she made this.  I did have to modify it.  I took off all the tape because it's for Cheerio the chinchilla and chinchillas will chew on anything inside their enclosure, including plastic that's toxic to them, so what we did, we took the tape off and we held it together with a rope and I'm going to fill it with some hay in here and that will make it even more exciting for them.  

Cheerio is an incredibly inquisitive chinchilla and she likes to chew on cardboard and paper and as long as she's not eating a ton of it, she's going to be totally fine.  She really likes the paper towel.  I'm gonna turn this around to make sure she's not chewing on too much of it.  

In the wild, chinchillas will be constantly chewing on different kinds of wood and grass and little dry berries.  They live in the Andes Mountains of South America and they're very active little critters.  You can see gets a ton of toys and she's always interacting with them, climbing on 'em, rolling 'em around, chewing on 'em, so making sure she doesn't get bored is really important.  I love how much she moves!  You don't quite expect them to be able to move that quickly.  They look like a really big, like, hampster or something, but they can really jump.  They can jump about four feet in the air, so that was a quick, easy little bounce for her to get up on that little perch there.

Let's go check in with another animal.  Hi, buddy.  Look, I have some fun things for you!  Maxine made that for you.  And you have these fun little blocks for you to play with.  Good job.  Here you go.  You want a block?  And I can also get you some food.  Is that what you really want?  Yeah.  You want some food.  I'm gonna put these blocks down here though, because I think you're gonna have fun moving those around.  

Huckleberry has really slowed down.  It is in the deep part of winter and we've just been in winter for months now and so beavers, they don't hibernate, but they do reduce their activity in the winter so they don't use as much energy, so they don't require as much food because there's not a lot of tree growth in the winter.  They also shut down.

Alright, Huckleberry, I'm gonna let you go back to sleep.  You have one more piece of food and then you're gonna head back to sleep.  I'm gonna go check in with some more animals.

We're here at the cavy enclosure and I have gifts from Ariella and Jennifer and I'm gonna put the fleece down first.

This is Cayenne who is lose to me, and we've got Chili Pepper back in his little box there.  He loves laying in the little box.  That's Toast.  Toast is checking out the new fleece.  And what do I have?  Look at that.  That's a fleece braid.  Get some good smells on that.  Cayenne likes the tunnel, too, and even Pumpkin has joined in checking it out.  Pumpkin has just found some hay to eat under the nice cozy safety of the hut.  That's exactly what guinea pigs are supposed to be doing.  They go find some place safe to be and they eat.  That's really what they do.

Cayenne, do you like that?  It is so fun to chew on, isn't it?  Here, I have another chew toy for you, too.  Got little fluffers on it.  And those, yes.  Those are really fun to crunch on.  All cavies are incredibly social and when I say all cavies, that means the group of rodents that have four toes on the front and three toes on the back.  Cavidae and Patagonian cavies are one of the largest, but not the largest, that's the capybara, and then guinea pigs, there are several different species of guinea pigs.  You can see that their faces are quite similar.  Their ears are different and obviously, their size, especially the size of their legs.  

These are for you and Cayenne.  Maxine gave these.  She made them.  They're slippery, aren't they?  They're fun.  You can't grab it, it's too hard, but that's great.  Look at him engaging with it.  Patagonian cavies are rodents.  They have those evergrowing teeth and so chewing on things is really important.  If you don't give them things to chew on, they will find things to chew on, which could include like, metal bowls or um, plastic litter pans and those, neither of those are good options for them to chew on, so providing them with appropriate toys to chew on is great.  Oh, you got one.  You got one.  Now, oh.  Uh-oh.  

It's not that scary.  It keeps hitting his eyelashes and then he's like, aah!  Okay, the round ones are really hard.  He hasn't gotten ahold of those yet, but he's able to get the little ones, the square ones and the disc ones.  He really wants to break 'em in half.  Ohhh, good grab, whoa!  This toy requires special supervision because it has those round beads.  If they were to get them off, they could accidentally swallow them, so while it's very fun for him to play with, I will take it out when I leave.

Alright, friends, that was really fun!  Thank you to everyone who sent the animals gifts.  They absolutely love them.  Thank you.  If you would like to send gifts of your own, you can send them to our PO Box.  Information is right there, and if you want to go on an animal adventure with us every week, be sure to subscribe and I'll see you next week.  Bye.

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