The animals at the B.C. Wildlife Park love having new scents in their enclosures.
Image Credit: FACEBOOK - B.C. Wildlife Park
September 23, 2019 - 12:15 PM
KAMLOOPS - If you’ve bought a perfume that isn’t quite ‘you’ or maybe you have some spices in your cupboard that never get used, the animals at the B.C. Wildlife Park could put them to use.
A post on the B.C. Wildlife Park Facebook page encourages people to bring in their unwanted scented items to be used for "scent enrichment" for the animals at the park.
Animal care supervisor Tracy Reynolds says the animals love to have new smells in their environment and will rub on, roll in or urinate on the new scents.
“Most of the carnivores, when you put different scents around, they feel the need to go around and remark everything, and they just want to smell it," Reynolds says. "It’s something different in their environment.”
Reynolds says the animals like both floral and musky scents and that they also like essential oils, spices, herbs and vanilla extract.
“With our cats, like the cougars, our keeper was telling me she really loves poultry spice, which is funny,” Reynolds says. “She really likes that one, she’ll really rub and roll in it.”
Credit: FACEBOOK - B.C. Wildlife Park
Even if you think you’ve bought a horrendous perfume, the animals will likely love it. Reynolds says the animals love to roll around in stinky things, just as some dogs do. She says the animal caretakers will use soiled shavings from animals like their llamas to stimulate the carnivores.
“If you have a dog, they’ll like to roll in some stinky dead animal or something else that smells disgusting smelling to us but to them, it smells interesting, and it’s the same kind of thing,” Reynolds says. “We’ll take the shavings that (the llamas) have peed on that are soaked in pee and we’ll spread that around the carnivores and they’ll roll in it and love it and think it smells awesome.”
If you have any scented item to donate, you can drop them off in the wooden donation bin located at the west side of the B.C. Wildlife Park parking lot. If you want to check out other items to donate to the park, check out their wishlist.
One of the cougars at the B.C. Wildlife Park has a particular fondness of poultry spice.
Image Credit: FACEBOOK - B.C. Wildlife Park
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