Each year the Houston Zoo works together with MD Anderson Children’s Art Project and MDACC (MD Anderson Cancer Center) to have patients from their Children’s Hospital create enrichment for our animals.
Over a series of days, staff members from our education department travel to MDACC to teach the kids about some of the animals that we have at the zoo and what our keepers/trainers do to enrich the lives of our animals.
This year the MDACC kids built three paper mache animals; a red panda, giraffe, and zebra. They also had the opportunity to paint like an animal. What does that mean? They couldn’t use their hands! We had some that held a paint brush in their mouth, another tried to paint using his feet, and we had a brave soul who dunked their nose into the paint and used their nose as the paint brush.
The zoo week culminated with the kids taking a field trip to the zoo yesterday. Three of the kids were able to come out along with their parents and two of their teachers. They were given a guided tour through the zoo, had a behind-the-scenes tour of elephants, and watched their paper mache animals get destroyed by our fossa and male clouded leopard.
While it is difficult to see all of your hard work getting smashed, the kids did get joy out of seeing the animals having so much fun.
Hansel, the fossa inspecting paper mache zebra
Rama, the clouded leopard searching for his treat within the paper mache red panda
