May 1, 2001
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Landscape With Good Taste?
Eight-year-old Silver (right) and 13-year-old Abby snack on acacia. Remember as a child poking french fries in your ears, or flinging peas with a spoon? Playing with food is a much-practiced pastime for children of all ages. And why not? It’s easy entertainment plus soothing to a growling belly. But if your ear is about two-feet long, or you don’t happen to have an opposable thumb, the french fry/pea tricks could be tough to accomplish.
No, the average person does not have two-foot ears. However, your average elephant can’t say the same. Believe it or not, just like a typical toddler, animals in the zoo like to entertain themselves with whatever is handy. And just as any good parent will provide plenty of do-dads to keep Baby distracted, a good zookeeper does the same.
“Behavioral enrichment” is what they call it at the World-Famous San Diego Zoo. These are edible toys chosen to please the palate as well as simulate the mind. Elephants, gorillas, rhinos, giraffes, iguanas — just about every “body” at the San Diego Zoo benefits from the program. And from hibiscus and acacia, to ficus, eugenia, and mulberry — a veritable garden of plants are on the menu.
The San Diego Zoo retrieves plants from a variety of sources, and it all must be pesticide free. A large portion of the plant material comes from Miramar Wholesale Nurseries (MWN). While you’ll see their specialty trees and plants gracing some of San Diego’s finest landmarks, it’s their “browse” materials that make them a hit with the animals at the San Diego Zoo. As one of the largest commercial landscape centers in Southern California, MWN can produce the quantities of plants the San Diego Zoo needs.
Aside from the browse materials, MWN provides shrubs, trees and vines to help make the animal habitat more home-like. “It’s nice to be able to contribute to the enhancement of the enclosures — it really adds atmosphere,” said Ken Danzer, shipping manager for MWN and frequent San Diego Zoo visitor. He works with Mike Letzring, a lead horticulturist at the San Diego Zoo to choose just the right plants.
“I help research the animals’ natural habitat, then design and purchase appropriate materials to make the exhibits as accurate as possible,” Letzring said. Working at the San Diego Zoo is a horticulturist’s dream, said Letzring, who travels the globe searching for just the right plant specimens to maintain the San Diego Zoo’s exotic atmosphere. Some seedlings he collects are doled out to local nurseries that will grow more exotic plants especially for the San Diego Zoo.
“In peak season, we can go through more than one thousand linear feet of hibiscus in a week,” said San Diego Zoo Arborist Daniel Simpson. “And every month about a ton of leafy ficus branches become both dietary and recreational material for the animals.”
The San Diego Zoo grows some of its own browse materials but, because demand is so high, must turn to outside sources like MWN and other nurseries. Banana leaves, which gorillas love, come from Carlin Nurseries in Rancho Santa Fe. Eucalyptus, a staple for Koalas, is provided by Rancho Jojoba Nursery in Lakeside. The San Diego Zoo also arranges with local agencies to recycle green waste — when palms need trimming or plants need to be cut or removed, the San Diego Zoo will accept certain material to offer to the animals.
Satisfaction of the animals is paramount. “The animals like to stretch to reach things, climb on things. At times they may want to chew on or shred stuff — just like we do,” Simpson said. “The behavioral enrichment program is effective in keeping the animals stimulated and content.”
Some of the plants are diet staples and not just wanted for their entertainment value. Giraffes eat acacia in the wild in Africa. “To make San Diego more like home, the giraffes get about six large pieces of acacia every day,” said Dustin Black, a senior animal keeper at the San Diego Zoo who cares for the giraffes and other animals. The acacia supplements the giraffes’ daily servings of alfalfa.
Mulberry is deciduous, so is a summer staple for some of the San Diego Zoo’s rare primates, like the douc langurs and colobus monkeys. Hibiscus is a winter fare. And while eucalyptus is a staple for koalas, the limbs of the trees are given to primates as toys, and the large stumps go to elephants who spend hours picking off the bark. Gorillas, chimps, elephants and rhinos are fed ficus, while macaws like to chew the ficus wood to maintain their beaks.
So next time you visit the San Diego Zoo, know that as much thought went into the plants the animals eat as went into the fantastic gardens that you see.
