Toronto Zoo animals getting bored during city’s deep freeze

In the early-winter deep freeze that has hit Ontario, the warmth and well-being of animals in the Toronto Zoo might seem a cause for concern.

But while the weather is certainly frightful, particularly for beasts like giraffes, hippos and rhinoceros, who have evolved in warmer African savannahs, the zookeepers are well versed in keeping the wide range of animals healthy and entertained throughout the winter.

“When the zoo was designed, it was built with four tropical pavilions,” said Eric Cole, the zoo’s wildlife care manager. “They’re climate controlled, regardless of the weather. We do have animals that are cold, hardy species, and this is a normal winter for them.”

That, of course, includes the zoo’s polar bears, who revel in the extreme cold, and snow leopards, who “lie down and use their tail as a scarf, they wrap it around their nose and they’re happy,” Cole said.

The grizzly bears just hibernate — “80 per cent” of the time, Cole says.

“Caring for the wolves and the tundra animals and polar bears, the hardest thing is keeping the zookeepers warm,” Cole said.

“Where we find it most challenging are animals from the African savannahs.”

But it’s not as simple as keeping those animals indoors all the time. The zoo’s lions, for instance, like to spend some time outdoors even in a snowy deep freeze.

“The big cats are surprisingly coldresistant,” Cole said. “The lions have access — they can go into the house or outside in the exhibit. Most days they’ll sit in their cave which has a heated floor.”

The zebras are fine outside, as long as it’s not icy. Rhinos and hippos turn into wintertime couch potatoes and stay indoors, along with the giraffes.

Now, as the temperatures plummet, the biggest problem zookeepers are dealing with is one that’s familiar to any parent keeping schoolchildren at home for a snow day. Boredom. So zookeepers spend much of the zoo’s off-season keeping the animals occupied with what Cole refers to as “behavioural enrichment training.”

“We do a lot more behavioural enrichment training, a lot more switching the animals around in environments, a lot more training with the keepers,” he said. “We provide a lot more stuff like sand, bedding, straw, stuff they can muck around in.”

The zookeepers also devise games and challenges for the animals — using so-called “enrichment items” that keep the animals engaged.

“We make sure their time is occupied more like it would be in the wild when they’re foraging,” he said.

The giraffes, for instance, don’t just get their food in a pile. “We hang it at heights and put it in different items they have to get it out of.”