In this week’s In Otter News, we join the staff at the Lake Superior Zoo for a fun experiment. They decided to see if they could get their grey wolves to go sledding.

We’ll explain: It’s an enrichment activity, an important part of a zoo animal’s life. It’s the same as how humans try to do something something different every once in a while. Many times during these activities, they’ll try to create a natural behavior. Sledding, however, is not one of them. It’s just for fun.

Lizzie Larson, the Director of Animal Care at the Lake Superior Zoo, explained the experiment to us, “They love the snow, and they love smells.” She put raccoon urine on the sled to see if they would roll on top of it and in turn, sled down the hill.

“They definitely interacted with them. They we’re trying to sled. We were somewhat successful we were able to get them to interact with that object but the sleds just weren’t big enough for them.” And now there is a call to action: “If you have any sleds that you would like to donate to the zoo, we would absolutely take them and try this experiment again.”