How Zookeepers Feed the Flightless Cassowary at the Melbourne Zoo
Bird keeper Ryan Pilgrim, who works at the Melbourne Zoo, shared how Zillie the cassowary is fed daily using a zipline that delivers fruit directly to her. The zipline is part of an enrichment program.
We’re going to be using one of the new enrichment items that have been installed for her to give her a different option for feeding.
As he was preparing Zillie’s meal, Pilgrim explained that a cassoary eats the flesh and skin of fruit, but cannot digest seeds. This is why these birds are so important to the rainforest: the undigested seeds return to the ground, promoting new forest growth.
Cassowaries will eat a fair bit of fruit throughout the day and they will travel a fair distance as well trying to find it. So generally, the fruit that they eat, by the time they get to another part of the forest, and they’ve passed through their system, and they drop it, it’s a very long way from that parent tree. Cassowaries have been known as the rainforest gardeners, which is why they’re incredibly important to the ecosystem, particularly in North Queensland
