Abstract
Environmental enrichment is a vital component of the daily husbandry behaviors of zoos and aquariums, as it can help stimulate the animals mentally and physically and mitigate any stereotypic behaviors. Enrichment has typically been seen as giving an animal control over its environment by providing scenarios that would mentally stimulate the animal and allow it to perform natural behaviors, such as hunting, foraging, or social interaction. Previous studies have investigated the success of mitigating stereotypic behaviors and potentially increasing animal welfare with otters. However, few have mentioned a way to incorporate daily husbandry requirements, such as providing a nutritional diet and potential enrichment tools, into one streamlined process. This project examined North American River Otters (Lontra canadensis) at the Mississippi Aquarium over a four month period. This project aimed to observe how enrichment can be used to establish any potential preference for food items, stimulate foraging behavior as a means of recovering food items, and strengthen a form of enrichment as positive reinforcement. The four otters received two ice treats each week containing pre-selected food items and their interactions with each food item were documented. The four otters demonstrated an overall preference for the non-produce food items, and demonstrated this preference even when presented with a layer of difficulty in retrieving the preferred food item. This project would require further analysis to test food preference using more food items, and would also require observing the long-term effects on stereotypic behavior observed in the otters.