Hi everyone. Welcome back to Animal Wonders. This is Zeema the keel-billed toucan.
She's going to be joining me for the first part of the video because we have some
presents that we're going to unbox and then we're going to hang out with some animals.
[CHEERY INTRO MUSIC]
So to open the boxes, Zeema, you need to go up on your perch.
And it's a little challenging 'cause right now, she's still got her bum leg with her brace on.
You got it? Here, have a blueberry.
There you go! First, I wanna show off this amazing art. This is Huckleberry the beaver, and Audrey made
this and it's just, it's so cute. This is when he was getting the unripe plum in the yard and
he stole it and then he realized he didn't like it after all. Thank you, Audrey! This is amazing.
Alright, first up, blueberry. Yeah, that makes you happy.
This is from Avery, and it says "please open on camera."
Avery wrote this and it says, "Dear Jessi, This is for the little hedgehog that's white.
Love, Avery. For Tickles," and there's a little picture of Tickles right there.
Let's see what she's made.
Oh my goodness.
She decorated the outside and the inside! There's a bed,
there's a little garden in here, a bookshelf, there's windows. This is the most adorable thing and
Tickles loves little boxes, huts like this. She's gonna love it.
And our next gift is from Maxine.
Let's see--Maxine, oh, there is a card here.
Open on camera please, that's what we're--it's a little picture of a camera. It says, "Dear Jessi,
Inside the box is a guinea pig hut, a target for Huckleberry, blocks for Huckleberry,
and little things to hang on the animals' cage it's assigned to.
From Maxine." Awesome.
Ooh.
This is neat. This says Mimi on it, and it looks like this might be able to be
attached to the cage or I can hang it and it looks like I can put little treats in there. That's super cute.
There's little holes in here, so maybe this is a mealworm dispenser and I could hang that
up and then she has to reach through and get the mealworms on the bottom. We'll see if that works!
We have a little grab bag for Huckleberry the beaver
with some cute little wooden blocks for him to play with.
Oh, these are super cute. They're like little dominoes.
Aw, he loves wood so much.
This goes to Cheerio. Cheerio is a chinchilla, and this is a cute little place that we could
hide some treats in. I will have to take the tape off because chinchillas cannot get plastic or tape
'cause they will chew on it and it'll hurt them, but we can rig this up so it's good for her.
Looks like we have a little chew toy for Chili Pepper the Patagonian cavy
and another one for Huckleberry. Again, we'll have to get rid of the tape on there,
but we can definitely use the wood.
And Rook the raven is going to love this.
She loves beads, and she doesn't really eat the beads, she just really likes to play with them.
And we have another one for Cayenne who's also a Patagonian cavy,
that's Chili Pepper's best bud, and I bet the guinea pigs are also going to play with these.
I wonder if Zeema will like this. What do you think?
Ohh, you're super interested in it. What do you think?
Ohh, she's getting it. Get it, get it! [LAUGHS]
Is that fun? It's not edible.
Would you rather have a blueberry? She's like, "Yes. Blueberries are better."
Thank you, Maxine! These are amazing homemade gifts. Thank you so much.
I have one more package.
It's a bigger one. It comes from Ariella and Jennifer. What's in here?
You're giving the good eye to it? Let's see.
Oh, that's cute. There's a little bunny, and on this side it says,
"Dear Animal Wonders, Thanks for all you do. We love your animals and you.
Here are some gifts for everyone. From Ariella and Jennifer, aka Mama.
Hope they are useful and the animals enjoy them.
Thanks again for the love and care you give the animals." Thank you guys.
Alright, let's see what they got. Ohh.
These are always welcome.The animals love chewing on these, especially the guinea pigs.
And more chew toys! It's like you guys know the animals like to chew on things.
And another fun chew toy. Man, what is this? This is gonna be really fun.
The cavies, the Patagonian cavies and the guinea pigs,
they lay on fleece blankets like this, but they also do chew on it a bit,
and so these are gonna be really fun for them to chew on.
This might be also fun for Mimi to climb on as well, so we have plenty of them to go around.
Thank you so much, Ariella and Jennifer.
Alright, let's go have fun with the animals! Zeema, this is where you have to go back home
because I don't think you're gonna like Huckleberry very much.
[WHOOSH SOUND]
This is the gift from Maxine, and I modified it a little bit to make sure that it was
appropriate for Mimi. So I took off some of the tape and I put a stronger different kind
of tape on there, and I put something that I could attach to her bars right here.
And then I also added a little lid here so she doesn't just look in and see the mealworms in there.
That closes down and so she has to wait for the mealworms to come out the bottom,
OR she's smart and she figures out that she can pop the lid open.
As you can see, we have a lot of toys in there for Mimi, and that's because she requires
a lot of enrichment, and enrichment is going to stimulate her mentally and physically.
In the wild, black tufted marmosets like Mimi would be living up in the trees
down in South America, and they're constantly moving and foraging and just having fun.
So providing her with enrichment is super important. Now, enrichment can
be anything that's stimulating, so it can be things that she climbs on,
it can be things that she looks at or hears, or a foraging item like this.
When you make enrichment, sometimes you have a vision of how the animal's gonna interact with it,
and then they do something completely different and that is totally okay.
As long as they interact with it somehow, then you've succeeded.
Now, when people see Mimi, a lot of people will think that they make good pets, and
that's the problem. So the reason that monkeys don't make good pets is because
they require so much specific care, and they really do best with other monkeys.
Oh, she figured it out! Look at you!
The reason that Mimi does not have any other marmosets with her is because someone tried
to make her a pet, and then they had her until she was an adult with not good interaction with others
of her kind. And so once they become an adult and they don't have good social interactions
with their own kind, it makes it incredibly challenging to introduce them later in life.
So the consensus with all of my primate experts is that it is very unlikely that she would be able to
be compatible with another of her kind, which is why enrichment is so incredibly important for her.
So if you have that urge to want one as a pet,
what I would recommend is get a marmoset stuffed animal so you can cuddle it, and
then get a dog or a cat so you can cuddle them, and then you'll have the best of both worlds.
Okay, Mimi, I'm going to let you explore that some more,
and we're gonna go hang out with another animal. [WHOOSH SOUND]
We're here at Tickles the hedgehog's home, and she's sleeping but she actually just
woke up because she heard us talking. But I have this cute little hut made by Avery, and
what I've done is I have put some little treats in the bottom of this, some mealworms and some,
a little bit of pear, and I've covered it up
with some shredded cardboard so she has to forage for it.
Now, she might not do this because hedgehogs are nocturnal, but let's put this in there
and see if she wants to join us.
She's under here all cozied up in her blanket,
so you can see her little fleece.
Hi, pretty girl. Do you wanna come say hi to everyone?
Hello. [TICKLES SNIFFS]
Look at your awesome self.
Can you smell?
Look at her nose going.
I love how much their nose moves when they're interested in something. She's also licking her lips.
Tickles is nocturnal, so waking up in the middle of the day is not her favorite thing,
but we do do some interactions. She is an ambassador animal, and so she does come out during the day.
And we share her with classrooms and audiences to teach about hedgehogs.
Alright, pretty girl, now that you've smelled it, you're probably gonna go back to sleep,
but let's get go check another animal out. [WHOOSH SOUND]
This gift is from Maxine, and she made this. I did have to modify it. I took off all the tape because
it's for Cheerio the chinchilla, and chinchillas will chew on anything inside their enclosure,
including plastic that's toxic to them. So what we did, we took the tape off and we held
it together with a rope. And I'm going to fill it with some...
...hay in here...
...and that will make it even more exciting for them.
Cheerio is an incredibly inquisitive chinchilla, and she likes to chew on cardboard and paper.
And as long as she's not eating a ton of it, she's going to be totally fine.
She really likes the paper towel. I'm gonna turn this around
to make sure she's not chewing on too much of it.
In the wild, chinchillas will be constantly chewing on different kinds of wood and grass
and little dry berries. They live in the Andes Mountains of South America,
and they're very active little critters. You can see gets a ton of toys, and she's
always interacting with them: climbing on 'em, rolling 'em around, chewing on 'em.
So making sure she doesn't get bored is really important.
[GIGGLES] I love how much she moves!
You don't quite expect them to be able to move that quickly. They look like a really big,
like, hampster or something, but they can really jump. They can jump about four feet in the air,
so that was a quick, easy little bounce for her to get up on that little perch there.
Let's go check in with another animal. [WHOOSH SOUND]
Hi, buddy. Look, I have some fun things for you!
Maxine made that for you. And you have these fun little blocks for you to play with.
Good job! Here you go.
You want a block? And I can also get you some food. Is that what you really want?
Yeah. You want some food. I'm gonna put these blocks down here though,
because I think you're gonna have fun moving those around.
Huckleberry has really slowed down. It is in the deep part of winter, and we've just
been in winter for months now. And so beavers, they don't hibernate,
but they do reduce their activity in the winter so they don't use as much energy, so they don't
require as much food because there's not a lot of tree growth in the winter. They also shut down.
Alright, Huckleberry, I'm gonna let you go back to sleep.
You have one more piece of food, and then you're gonna head back to sleep.
I'm gonna go check in with some more animals. [WHOOSH SOUND]
We're here at the cavy enclosure, and I have gifts from Ariella and Jennifer.
And I'm gonna put the fleece down first.
This is Cayenne who is close to me, and we've got Chili Pepper back in his little box there.
He loves laying in the little box.
That's Toast. Toast is checking out the new fleece.
And what do I have? Look at that.
That's a fleece braid. Get some good smells on that.
Cayenne likes the tunnel, too, and even Pumpkin has joined in checking it out.
Pumpkin has just found some hay to eat under the nice cozy safety of the hut.
That's exactly what guinea pigs are supposed to be doing.
They go find some place safe to be, and they eat. That's really what they do.
Cayenne, do you like that? It is so fun to chew on, isn't it?
Here, I have another chew toy for you, too.
Got little fluffers on it.
And those, yes. Those are really fun to crunch on.
All cavies are incredibly social and when I say all cavies, that means the group of rodents
that have four toes on the front and three toes on the back.
Caviidae and Patagonian cavies are one of the largest, but not the largest.
That's the capybara. And then guinea pigs, there are several different species of guinea pigs.
You can see that their faces are quite similar.
Their ears are different and obviously, their size, especially the size of their legs.
These are for you and Cayenne.
Maxine gave these. She made them.
They're slippery, aren't they? They're fun.
[LAUGHS]
You can't grab it, it's too hard, but that's great. Look at him engaging with it.
Patagonian cavies are rodents. They have those ever growing teeth, and so chewing on things is
really important. If you don't give them things to chew on, they will find things to chew on,
which could include like, metal bowls or...
...plastic litter pans and those, neither of those are good options for them to chew on.
So providing them with appropriate toys to chew on is great.
Oh, you got one! You got one. Now, oh.
Uh-oh. [LAUGHS]
It's not that scary. It keeps hitting his eyelashes and then he's like, aah!
Okay, the round ones are really hard. He hasn't gotten ahold of those yet.
But he's able to get the little ones, the square ones and the disc ones.
He really wants to break 'em in half.
Ohhh, good grab, whoa!
This toy requires special supervision because it has those round beads.
If they were to get them off, they could accidentally swallow them,
so while it's very fun for him to play with, I will take it out when I leave.
[WHOOSH SOUND] Alright, friends, that was really fun!
Thank you to everyone who sent the animals gifts. They absolutely love them. Thank you.
If you would like to send gifts of your own, you can send them to our PO Box.
Information is right there. And if you want to go on an animal adventure with us every week,
be sure to subscribe and I'll see you next week. Bye!
[BOLD OUTRO MUSIC]