Christmas has come early for the animal residents at Canberra’s National Zoo and Aquarium.

For 12 days, from 7 December, zookeepers will give the animals Christmas-themed enrichment items. The zookeepers will also give talks each day.

It will culminate in the zoo’s first Christmas concert on the 19th.

Senior zookeeper Serena Robbie said enrichment was an important part of each animal’s day.

“It not only gets them active physically and mentally, but it also encourages them to use their natural behaviours they would use out in the wild,” Ms Robbie said.

She said the zookeepers enjoyed making the enrichments.

“It’s really fun being able to come up with new and exciting things every single day,” Ms Robbie said.

“Watching the animals interact with our enrichments is quite rewarding as well.

“It’s really fun when it comes to the holidays and the festive time because we get to come up with some really fun, creative enrichment based on Christmas or Easter.”

She said the zookeepers aimed to keep the enrichment focused on the species, to incorporate things such as food, sight, visual audio and foraging.

Enrichment officer Sarah Howarth said the zookeepers put a lot of effort into the enrichments.

“We give our animals fun things to do, new things to experience, sights, smells, textures,” Ms Howarth said.

She said enrichment not only focused on the animals’ welfare and health but also their happiness and having a fun experience.

“We do enrichment all the time, every day, but around holidays we can make it a bit more festive and a bit more colourful just to give them something a bit different – and it looks awfully cute as well,” Ms Howarth said.

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