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Watch Zoo Animals Paint With Their Snouts, Beaks, and Paws

Zoo animals are picking up painting—and the results are both cute (to us) and mentally stimulating (for them).
ByCaLea Johnson|
Zoo Teaches Animals to Paint
Zoo Teaches Animals to Paint | Insider

Playing music—or attempting to, at least—isn’t the only way zoo animals can express themselves. They’ve been known to dabble in the visual arts as well. Zoos across the country have provided their animals with canvases and paintbrushes to make art. Luckily, we have footage of the animal artists at New York’s Rosamond Gifford Zoo pawing and pecking away at their works in progress.

The above YouTube video from Insider stars a diverse array of animals in the artistic zone. While Basil the red panda simply grabs the brush to create his masterpiece, the zookeepers must get creative helping animals who don’t have paws. For example, workers hand Briggs, the African Guinea hog, a brush with a wide, flat end so that he can grab it with his teeth. Meanwhile, Jeckyl, the African pied crow, pecks at a brush stuffed into a swinging rope toy to express his artistic side.

The Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse isn’t the only place where this happens. The video shows other facilities—from California’s Oakland Zoo to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado—bringing out their animals’ inner Picassos. In some cases, animals at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo learn art as part of training exercises. They step into nontoxic paints and walk over a canvas in the direction of a target, and once they reach it they receive a treat. No animals are forced to participate in the activity. 

According to the Insider video, many zoos auction off animal paintings, and the earnings are typically donated to animal welfare facilities or designated for in-house animal care. The Rosamond Gifford Zoo has even dedicated an annual auction event to animal art called Art Gone Wild.

Encouraging these animals to paint isn’t just for our amusement; the activity is part of enrichment training. The Saint Louis Zoo defines enrichment as a process that stimulates animals and encourages them to be more active. Other forms of enrichment include adding different scents to an environment, providing puzzle feeders, and giving animals various toys. Such activities can be beneficial. A 2011 study from the Journal of Animal Science suggested that environmental enrichment can reduce actions related to high stress levels in zoo animals. 

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