Of honey-bones and mayo-ball

Diary entry, 25.09.2011, guest

Pictures of the day (6 images)   

After I’ve already dealt for a while with my project now, I would like to tell a little bit about it: I’m occupying myself with the paw-preference of the wolves and dogs to find out, so to speak, whether they are rather “left- or right-handed”. To find out this, the wolves and dogs get all sorts of possible enrichments. Means good-smelling, tasting (depending on whether one is human or animal), strange toys with which they can deal with. Therefore creativity was asked – The end product were different new delicacies as for example bones rubbed with honey. It is exciting how differently the animals occupy with the various enrichments - or also not. Shima for example showed herself particularly adept when she held a big ball rubbed with mayonnaise with both paws. Others looked less skillfully – for example Nanuk who first dumped the contents of a shoebox while carrying it around and then seemed to be surprised, why the box is empty then on this day. Nanuk was also the one who needed longest to approach to the shoebox. Others, such as Kaspar, just made a beeline for the unknown and disassembled it in the smallest scraps while "examining". Cherokee is interested only in everything where food is in there – on things which merely smell nicely (or also tomatoes), he turns his back on. What we will know after the project anyway definitely is which wolf or dog eats what with pleasure. Nanuk doesn’t like mayonnaise (he rather rubs himself with it - and afterwards the fence), Geronimo likes fruits and Tatonga is totally crazy about spices and syrup. Also the dogs are having their predilections and dislikes – Meru seems to be the only one who has absolutely no use for tuna at all. I am curious to see what the result of the project will look like and what else turns out.