Students see zoo wildlife up close

Eduardo Fernandez designs toys. He helped create a giant frozen applesauce-soaked seal for polar bears to play with and hamster balls filled with fish for penguins. These toys are far more than entertaining. They are essential for the zoo animals’ well-being.\nFernandez, a graduate student, works in the Behavioral Systems and Learning Lab at IU, which works in cooperation with area zoos. He studies captive animals and their behavior. \nIn a 2004 experiment at the Cincinnati Zoo, Fernandez and other researchers tried to increase the time penguins spent swimming. They found that the penguins were not swimming as much as they should because they had no incentive to go in the water and zookeepers gave the penguins their food directly. \nThe researchers used hamster balls filled with fish to lure the penguins into the water. First, the penguins had to be trained to recognize the toys, also referred to as enrichment.\n“It was the combination of enrichment and training that allowed them to maintain their habits,” Fernandez said. \nResearchers conducted a similar experiment with two polar bears at the Indianapolis Zoo. They provided the bears with a frozen seal soaked in applesauce, which allowed them to more naturally hunt the seal.\n“It provides good welfare for the animals,” Fernandez said.\nFernandez studies what is known as stereotypic behavior, which occurs when captive animals cannot hunt for their food naturally. Pacing and swimming in circles are a few examples. Providing animals with more opportunities to get their own food decreases these undesirable behaviors. \nSenior Maeghan Brass is an undergraduate researcher at the lab. She visits the zoo twice a week to observe the animals. She talks to zoo visitors and explains what the animals are doing. \n“You feel like you’re actually doing something when you talk to visitors and explain the experiments,” she said.\nFernandez said he would like to see more opportunities for students to learn about issues facing animal welfare. \n“Animal welfare is a really big topic right now,” he said, adding that he feels that there are not enough classes about it. “I’d be happy to teach hundreds of undergraduates how to make a polar bear’s life better.”\nLab director and psychology professor William D. Timberlake agrees that people need to better understand animals.\n“Respect for the animal is really important and part of that is knowing how they work and not how you assume they work,” he said.\nWorking in the lab and at zoos is very rewarding for Fernandez. \n“It’s great to see how you’ve changed an animal’s behavior in a way that’s better for it,” he said.\nAnyone interested in research opportunities can visit the BSL Lab Web site at www.indiana.edu/~bsl.