Frozen treats and pools help keep the animals cool at the zoo

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On a hot August day, a group of raccoons use their fingers to pick at small blocks of ice filled with frozen fruit, stopping to take little bites.

As the temperature reached into the high 20s late Thursday morning, those frozen treats were one of the ways staff at the Ecomuseum Zoo in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue were helping their critters stay cool.

With heat warnings in place across much of southern, western and central Quebec, zoos and animal parks say they’re making sure animals have access to water, shade and the occasional cool treat so they can beat the heat as naturally as possible.

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Nathalie Jreidini, the director of education at the Ecomuseum and a biologist, said zookeepers watch for signs that animals might be getting overheated.

“They really observe the behaviour of the animals — whether they’re being a bit less active, whether they’re lethargic, whether they’re panting,” she said. “That’s how we can see if they need an additional helping hand or not.”

Most of the time, that additional help isn’t necessary at the Ecomuseum, Jreidini said. The zoo only has animals indigenous to Quebec, and all its creatures would not be able to survive in the wild because some were orphaned or injured while others were raised under human care.

“Their living spaces are already adapted to have all sorts of tools that they can choose to use to cool themselves down in the case of extreme heat,” she said. “For example, there’s colder rocks with our wild turkeys that they can choose to use, because we don’t want to really cool them off too quickly. It’s really them having access to something that’s a bit colder to use.”

Other animals, like the zoo’s black bear and its raccoons, have water pools.

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Cold fruit and ice cubes — sometimes made with fish water for the otters — are also offered.

“It’s a way for us to enrich their daily nutrition, give them something that instigates their sense of smell,” Jreidini said. “It makes it a bit harder to get to the food sometimes, so that really instigates their sense of hunting.”

Jreidini said mammals with thick fur are more likely to hide from the sun during the day.

“In general, when it’s warm, animals will just be less active in order to use less energy, so that’s the case for the wolves, the foxes, canids in general, much like our dogs,” she said, adding that animals will also eat less.

On Thursday, as otters played in the water seemingly unfazed by the heat, a nearby fisher — a small carnivore related to martens and minks — napped in a shady structure slung between two trees.

The centre’s bear was napping in a shady ditch at the edge of her enclosure before climbing out to get something to eat, panting almost like a dog. Not too far away, the ducks and geese stuck to the shade, with some sleeping while others preened their feathers.

Birds have their own way of adapting, Jreidini said, often extending their wings to cool down, while turkey vultures will urinate on themselves to keep cool.

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At Parc Omega, a safari park of more than 2,200 acres near Montebello, ensuring animals have what they need to stay cool in the summer starts with the design of their habitats, said Gabriel Belley, the director of site operations.

“We focus on habitat quality,” he said. “When we add an animal or when we design a habitat for an animal, before you even put it in, it has to meet all the animal’s needs in summer as well as in winter. And the problem for any animal in summer is how to protect it from the heat.”

The park’s elk, for example, have access to several lakes, a river and a forest where they can find shade.

If animals have the appropriate habitat, the park, which attempts to create naturalistic environments for animals native to North America, Europe and Mongolia, doesn’t need to take other steps to protect animals from the weather, Belley said.

Foxes can go into underground dens, bears can spend time in the water and the park’s wild boars have access to a mud pit, where they can roll around to protect themselves from the heat.

The wild boars, native to European countries like France, do better with the heat, he said, and tend to be more active, though none of the animals like extremely high temperatures.

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Food frozen in blocks of ice is offered here, too.

“The bears, for example, they love it,” Belley said. “It’s very effective because they can’t eat it all at once, so they’ll lick it, they’ll play with it. So it will refresh them for a long time.”

In Quebec City, where the temperature reached a high of 31 C on Thursday, the Aquarium du Québec has plans in place to help its outdoor animals — including polar bears — stay cool, said curator Catherine Rousseau.

The bears’ outdoor pool is held at a cool 9 C — a comfortable temperature for animals used to cold northern waters.

Bears can also go inside, where it’s cooler and darker and misters have been set up to give them a light spray, she said.

Arctic foxes, whose fur is also suited to the far north, can stay in their dens on hot days and are given basins with ice and water. As at the other parks, food is offered in blocks of ice and the aquarium will also put toys in water basins — an enriching way to encourage the animals to cool off.

For the aquarium’s seals, who are also outside, the warm weather isn’t as difficult. They spend most of their time in the water — also kept at 9 C — but enjoy the sunny days.

Hot weather also means the aquarium must watch its indoor tanks more closely to ensure they’re at the right temperature.

“A variation of two degrees over a few days, it’s not the end of the world, but we still need to try to get to the ideal temperature, because they’ll find themselves with a weakened immune system, and that can lead to illnesses,” Rousseau said.

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