Bethany Cantwell, Auckland Zoo volunteer.
I volunteer at Auckland Zoo, so that's my happy place. The job I'm doing at the moment is in behavioural enrichment, preparing fun challenges for the animals.
A challenge has to be interesting enough that an animal wants to take it on. It could be a funny-shaped object with a smell of food in the middle of it.
We might put fruit in an icecream container. That's then wrapped in a pillowcase and tied up for the orangutans to get into. You have to think about what the animal will use to get into the food, and it's nothing like what we would do. We'll automatically think of undoing the knots but they will just put their eye teeth in it and rip it apart. You have to tie a package up unbelievably tightly for the orangutans, otherwise they just pull out the food straight away.
Some primates manipulate things in different ways so you have to do things differently. For example, siamangs won't put their hands in socks, so when we put something in a sock for them, we have to make sure it sits at the top so they can see it, otherwise they'll find it scary.
