Shelley is already enjoying her new perching!

About a year ago, we introduced you to a novel space in our Rainforest Revealed loop fit for some of our Ambassador Animal species like our striped skunks, prehensile-tailed porcupine and two-toed sloth. The habitat is looking a little different nowadays! 

The space, called the Rainforest Ambassador Complex, recently underwent a renovation courtesy of our Ambassador Animal care team to better suit the needs of our animal residents – including a few new faces to the habitat! Our perching is made from real oak to make the branches more naturalistic for our animals. This material does need a replacement once a year – leading in part to this refresh of the Ambassador space.  

“It gives us an opportunity to freshen up habitats for all of our animals and change them up – similar to how we like to rearrange our rooms at home,” Savannah said. “Their natural habitats would be forever changing so it gives us a good opportunity to mimic the same environment.” 

This project was weeks in the making as our Ambassador team collected perching, scheduled the project and moved our animal residents out of the space. In two days, the old perching and vines were removed and an all-new design with some exciting new features was put in its place.  

Two more sloth feeding platforms are now in the habitat to help resident two-toed sloth Higgins keep his meals safe from Brazilian porcupine Shelley and striped skunks DeeDee and Dexter. There’s even a platform at the front of the habitat for guests to see Higgins up close if he chooses to use it.  

“By adding more of these spaces, we are able to scatter Higgins’ diet allowing him to forage for longer periods of time,” said Savannah Luhn, our Ambassador area supervisor. “It also opens up our ability to use different enrichment items more frequently such as forage bowls and puzzle feeders.” 

Also new to the upper levels of the space: higher perching and vines for our arboreal Shelley and Higgins, thanks to Marc Franzen, our bear wellbeing coordinator who often helps to enrich our residents’ habitats with perching. 

“It also allows them to use their adaptations more – Shelley hanging and Higgin’s using that impressive core strength,” Savannah said. “It also has an added bonus of keepers not knocking their heads on perching.” 

Higgins explores his habitat!

Speaking of climbing – our skunks are still in their “climbing era,” leading to our Ambassador team to add some perching near the ground for DeeDee and Dexter to climb on as well. 

Another addition to the space includes an old flamingo pond, which was turned into a permanent pond for red-footed tortoise R.V. and leopard tortoise Baobab. And to our surprise, black vulture Tony has been enjoying it as well, especially for the bathing and fishing enrichment opportunities. 

While we’ve seen an increase in behaviors in all of the animal residents in this space, Tony the black vulture has especially been using the whole space. Before, he spent most of his time on the left side of the habitat – but now he’s been enjoying even more of the area.   

“It is so much fun watching him come out of his shell and do natural vulture behaviors,” Savannah said. “It shows an increased wellbeing and comfortability.” 

Soon, we will add permanent cameras in the main habitat and nighthouses to better see the behaviors of the majority of the nocturnal species in the space.  

“The cameras will allow us to monitor their behavior overnight and make sure they are doing all the appropriate things,” Savannah said. “It will also allow us to see the effectiveness of enrichment and identify spots where we can continue to improve the habitat.” 

We hope you’ll stop by our Rainforest Ambassador Complex soon to see the changes for yourself! 

Special thanks to Flammio Financial Group, Stifel-Garvin Wealth Management Group, Artemis IT, and Jim and Darleen Barfield. Their generosity makes our work possible! 

Brevard Zoo is an independent, not-for-profit organization that receives no recurring government funding for our operating costs. Your generous support enables us to continue to serve our community and continue our vital animal wellness, education and conservation programs.