An important job we did while volunteering for WFFT in Thailand is creating enrichments for the elephants who live there. Enrichments provide entertainment for the elephants and help them satisfy their need to forage for food as they would in the wild. We made a couple different types of enrichments. One was called a “chandelier” and it was made by stuffing fruit into tires and hanging them from the pavilions in the enclosures. We would line the tires with long pieces of banana trees and tired them using banana string. This made it harder for the elephants to get the food out. Providing them with a challenge increases the quality of their lives. Elephants are intelligent and social beings, therefore they need enrichments and bonds with other elephants to be happy.

Another type of enrichment that we made for them was very easy and fun. We tied corn together by the husks and threw them up into trees and hid them in bushes. We also did something similar to this using pineapples and watermelons and tying them together with banana string that the mahouts made from the left over banana trees. I think the best enrichment project that we had was making floating logs. We used a trunk of a banana tree and hollowed it out. We then placed chunks of fruit and corn inside and tied them in similar to how we did the chandeliers and threw them into the ponds and lakes inside the enclosures. They floated, which was cool to watch as the elephants swam after them and tried to get the fruit out. Some of the elephants would work on the enrichments together and get the food out and share it. Others preferred to work solo, so it was important to have a variety of enrichments in each enclosure.

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