Culinary challenges key to unlocking monkey business
A troupe of Vervet monkeys is going coconuts for a puzzling enrichment item at Werribee Open Range Zoo.
Keepers hang halved coconut shells on knotted ropes throughout the curious monkeys’ habitat, with each shell containing high-value food items. The monkeys use their problem-solving skills and dexterous paws to open and access the sweet rewards.
African River Trail keeper Maddy Jamieson said the coconut puzzle feeders are a fun and engaging way to encourage the primates’ natural behaviours.
“When given the choice, animals tend to prefer foods that take a level of effort to access, a behavioural phenomenon called contrafreeloading,” Ms Jamieson said. “We provide feeding puzzles at different times of the day to a number of our species to add complexity to their environment and encourage foraging and critical thinking.
"These types of enrichment opportunities lengthen the time spent searching for food and eating in general, as would be typical in the wild.”
"These types of enrichment opportunities lengthen the time spent searching for food and eating in general, as would be typical in the wild.”
Werribee Open Range Zoo is currently home to nine Vervet monkeys, whose natural habitat ranges across eastern Africa from the Ethiopian Highlands and southern Somalia, to southern-most South Africa. While they are considered locally abundant in some regions, wild populations are declining due to habitat destruction with the monkeys now absent from large areas of their original geographic range.
Werribee Open Range Zoo’s Vervet monkeys are an ambassador species for Zoos Victoria’s Coffee for Wildlife initiative, which provides caffeine-loving Melburnians with a delicious way to help save wildlife.
Sun-grown coffee plantations strip the rainforests in Ethiopia, Sumatra and Papua New Guinea of precious biodiversity. Coffee for Wildlife is shade-grown coffee, grown beneath the rainforest tree canopy, which supports farmers and preserves precious habitat for wildlife.
Coffee for Wildlife products can be purchased at Zoos Victoria shops, the online Zoo store and Genovese.
Zoos Victoria and Werribee Open Range Zoo visitors are reminded that all tickets must be pre-booked online at zoo.org.au. Zoos Victoria Members no longer need to book but are required to scan their Membership card for entry.