Animal Diaries Archive

Balls of fun!

18 July 2008

Welcome to the next edition of elephant diaries. This episode we’ll talk about the importance of enrichment and exercise for our beautiful elephants.

Being that elephants are such large powerful animals with an extremely high level of intelligence; it is very most importance to provide them with a variety of activities to exercise the body and the mind. We do this in a variety of ways including walking the girls out on the acres of open land out the back of the Zoo, letting them natural graze on what ever they like, having training sessions with them and getting them to participate in our daily demonstrations. One other way that we stimulate activity and minds is to play games like soccer with these three and half tone beasts. Not only are these activities fun for the elephants but they are also fun for the keepers and the patrons just love to watch!

As i’m sure you can guess that a soccer ball won’t last long with an elephant especially when they stomp on it! Some of our regular readers may recall a story that I did almost a year ago thanking Rebel Sport for their kind donation of over 100 Balls for the elephants…Well here we go again! Thank-you Rebel Sport at Maroochydore, you guys are the best! These guys just donated another 100 balls - how awesome is that!

These activities provide the elephants with a huge amount of stimulation and activity as they kick those massive legs everywhere sending the balls flying in every direction. When they have had enough they stomp on them leaving the ring of a large bang in your ears!

Well that’s it for now, make sure you get down and check us out; you’ll love the daily demo.