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.

“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.”

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. Hibisucs 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.