Giant pandas and meerkats have been enjoying playing with new toys at a city zoo as part of their enrichment programme.
Tian Tian and Yang Guang, the UK’s only giant pandas, enjoyed rolling around colourful large plastic bobbins in their enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo.
The bobbins, designed as special bear toys, were bought by a zoo volunteer who had them imported from the US.
Tian Tian, the female panda, appeared so pleased with her new red toy that she dragged it into her off-show area, the special place she reserves for all her favourite things, while male Yang Guang enjoyed chewing his blue bobbin and wrestling with it.
Meanwhile, the meerkats had fun diving into a pool of coloured balls placed in their enclosure.
RZSS Edinburgh Zoo has released video footage of the animals playing with their new toys.
Alison Maclean, team leader for giant pandas and carnivores, said: “As well as being great fun for visitors to watch, enrichment plays an important role in the lives of the animals at RZSS Edinburgh Zoo, providing extra stimulation that helps them to demonstrate natural, species-typical behaviour and to enhance their physical and physiological well-being.
“We create our enrichment programmes with each individual species’ natural behaviours in mind.
“Hidden within the meerkat’s ball pits are grubs that they forage for and problem-solve to find whilst the coloured drums contain a ball that makes a curious sound when the pandas roll them around.
“We were particularly delighted to see Tian Tian the female giant panda pulling her bobbin into her off-show den, something she only does with things she really likes.”
Tian Tian (Sweetie) and Yang Guang (Sunshine) arrived on loan from China in December 2011 and are the first giant pandas to live in the UK for 17 years.
Experts are waiting to find out if Tian Tian is pregnant after she was artificially inseminated in March.
Keepers have inseminated her on two previous occasions but she has failed to produce a panda cub.
The zoo has a dedicated enrichment group that integrates five different types of enrichment into their animal’s lives, including environmental, habitat, sensory, food and social enrichment.
Many enrichment materials are common everyday items such as clothes, newspapers and bed sheets whilst others can be a bit more unusual, such as fire hoses and bungee cords.
Anyone who wishes to donate items can find a full list of what is suitable at www.edinburghzoo.org.uk or can contact the enrichment team at enrichment@rzss.org.uk first to discuss any possible donation.