welcome back to another behavior breakdown i'm k passionate a marine biologist who's
worked with a variety of very picky sea otters and penguins throughout her career
all right this tweet says an aquarium in japan has changed the diet of its penguins and otters
due to rising costs and the animals are refusing to eat the cheaper fish let's see what's up
okay it looks like we've got some of the cold weather species of penguin
so honestly this just looks like feeding penguins to me penguins are notoriously picky eaters
well
i have had penguins prefer which side the eyeball is on the fish
sorry is it facing the wrong way
what's what's wrong with it if you have like one little scale out of place i've
had to pluck that scale in order to make sure that the the animal will eat the fish
i don't understand
normally out in the ocean these animals are just indiscriminate predators like most wild animals
they will eat just about anything that they can catch and this makes
a lot of sense when you think about it
penguins out in the wild don't have the luxury of refusing a fish simply because it's something
that they haven't tried before it's very possible that they might not catch another fish for days
so if they refuse a meal it could very well have been their last animals in zoos and aquariums
never go without food they have never gone without food they don't know what it means
to be hungry in the wild an animal never knows if its next meal is gonna be in two
hours or two weeks and here these penguins know the trainers will be back at 3 30 to try again
there's some for everyone
and i also think that the caption in this case is a little bit misleading a cheaper fish does
not necessarily mean a lower quality fish for example dungeness crab is cheaper than king crab
now this doesn't mean that it's cheaper quality or spoiled in some way it's simply more affordable
in zoos and aquariums a type of fish called a capelin has traditionally been a very
affordable option but some of that availability is now changing due to
overfishing there is a worldwide shortage on capelin which means that the price is soaring
in fact oceana canada is calling for the complete closure of capelin fisheries until
the population rebounds there are other types of fish with similar nutrients to capelin that
could be used like sardines for example but the animals may not be used to eating sardines
so there may be a learning period when switching between the two items
now i don't like to speak on what happens in other countries but in north american
facilities zoos and aquariums will not feed their animals fish that is not of the highest quality
the food prep area of these animals is inspected by federal agencies like
the usda and is held to the same standards as high-end restaurants
and in my experience penguins imprint very easily on food it is absolutely
possible to change their diet but it takes time and it takes patience
yellow for the love of pete
and a lot of this pickiness can be blamed on us as trainers we feed the animals the food that
they like the best because it's easiest for us and because we like making the animals happy
oh my god
you gotta be kidding me and in a lot of ways our pets are the same way as humans we get
pleasure from giving our animals treats that they enjoy but that doesn't necessarily mean
that their diet should be exclusively based on the things they enjoy the most
all right let's take a look at the otters
um so these are riverards probably asian small claw daughters
and you know i mean otters or otters are very similar um they're weasels closely related
to ferrets you can change their diet and we have just recently changed the diet of our ferrets
it's not easy it takes time it takes patience and you may have setbacks but it can be done a
good example is with the sea otters that you see in a lot of our videos we had recently changed
their diet their specific type of clams that they were getting they used to get surf clams
but lately there had been a shortage in surf clams making those prices absolutely sore so we switched
the particular type of clam we were sourcing to propeller clamps and we've got some clamps so now
these are still a very nutritionally dense food for the animals
but they're a little bit more readily available making them just a little bit more affordable
and it did take them a while to get used to them i'll give you something different sorry is that
gross we would throw all the tricks that we had at them chopping them up into smaller pieces
mixing them in with other types of food but i think the thing that works the best
for sea otters is to freeze that food into an ice block you know be pretty generous about it
and for sea otters ice treats never fail it seems that when an otter sees something frozen into an
ice street they automatically assume what's inside is solid gold you've been awarded the gold medal
so this is uh this is hilarious um but for me it actually shows a high level of care
when you have animals that are so picky that they won't eat a new prey type it means that they are
provided for and have access to anything that they could want oh we sometimes keep landing what do
you think let me know in the comments down below and while you're down there like and subscribe
hit that bell button so you'll be notified when the next video goes live cheers
uh
dude
you guys are being silly
you