Science & Tech

The Pumpkin-Feeding Tradition at American Zoos

ANNIE HUANG

Image Courtesy of Santa Barbara Zoo

Zoos across the nation are capitalizing on the United States’ affinity for Halloween by hosting Halloween-themed events. While zoos primarily design these events to engage humans, they aren’t forgetting about their animals, either. One of the primary attractions at these Halloween celebrations involves giving zoo animals pumpkins for spectators to observe their behaviors.

How the animals react to the pumpkins varies depending on their species and individual personalities. Some animals, like elephants, smash the pumpkins before devouring them. Others reach into the pumpkins to get food that zoo employees have stored inside. Animals that are lithe or small enough to go inside the pumpkins — like snakes, bats, and birds — eat the pumpkins from the inside out.

Many of the most prominent zoos, including the Brookfield Zoo, Detroit Zoo, Smithsonian Zoo, Oakland Zoo, and Los Angeles Zoo, have historically given their animals pumpkins for Halloween and engaged the public in the process. The Santa Barbara Zoo was not an exception to this trend, with their own celebration “Boo at the Zoo” taking place from Oct. 19 to Oct. 21.

Image Courtesy of Santa Barbara Zoo

At the event, local organizations and businesses handed out treats to trick-or-treaters in honor of the event’s theme — Candypalooza. There was an emphasis on handing out sustainable and palm oil free

candy in solidarity with wild asian elephants, gibbons, and rhinoceros hornbills whose habitats are being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations.

Many zoos claim that giving animals pumpkins isn’t just to please the crowds that saturate zoos around the holidays. According to most zoos who engage in the practice, pumpkins have nutritional value, can provide animals with novel stimuli, and facilitate independent food-seeking. Some zoos also use their Halloween events as a platform to promote conservation efforts.

Aside from giving spectators a novel experience, driving revenue to the zoo, and stimulating zoo animals with new objects, giving old, unsold, and/or misshapen pumpkins to zoo animals can be a form of sustainable recycling.

Both children and adults enjoy watching animals interact with pumpkins, as it is an activity that is novel for spectators and animals alike. This has resulted in videos of animals eating pumpkins going viral, such as one that features a group of Galápagos tortoises at the San Diego Zoo. These videos have publicized the practice of giving animals pumpkins and potentially attracted new visitors to participating zoos.

Readers who want the opportunity to watch animals interact with pumpkins can attend the Santa Barbara Zoo’s Thanksgiving Day Pumpkin Smash on Nov. 22.

The Science of Fear

HANNAH MAEROWITZ Science & Tech Editor

Image Courtesy of Rahu | Pixabay

Horror movies, scary costumes, and haunted houses are all characteristic of Halloween and indicative of why some are so fond of the holiday — a lot of people love being scared.

Fear is generally viewed as an unpleasant emotion, which can make a pension for fear seem counterintuitive. However, it’s not that simple.

For some thrill seekers, mood can improve significantly after going to a haunted house. This may be due to the fact that people tend to process information differently than they did before they went through the haunted house — especially negative information. This may result in a paradoxical relaxing effect.

The amygdala is largely responsible for how we experience fear. Associated with emotions and memory, the amygdala sends signals to the body that tell it to increase respiration, blood pressure, and heart rate when it receives signals (like pain or a loud sound) that there may be a threat.

At this point, fear becomes physiological as the hippocampus triggers a fight or flight response, which results in a surge of adrenaline as hormones are released by the adrenal glands.

Dopamine is one of the hormones released during this process. Although it’s scientifically uncertain why some people enjoy the experience of fear more than others, it’s theorized that a thrill seeker’s brain may release more dopamine during

this process. Dopamine release is associated with pleasure and movement, which makes increased release a potential explanation of why some have a fondness for fear.

Haunted houses hijack this fear response to trick us into feeling like we’re sincerely threatened, even though haunted houses are all controlled environments. One strategy many haunted houses use to accomplish this is creating a sense of disorientation. They may have blackout rooms, which deprive people of knowing what’s coming next.

Strobes, fog, and actors hyperventilating or creating loud sounds can add to this sense of disorientation. All of these techniques combined can magnify disorientation to a dramatic extent.

Disorientation is scary for the same reason that suspense is exciting — you don’t know what could happen next, so it feels as though everything could potentially be a threat. This stands in stark contrast to the more traditional “boo scare,” where someone surprises you with a loud noise when you’re not expecting it.

Although loud noises are a fear we’re born with because of its evolutionary functionality, these sudden and quick scares don’t create as much fear because we can quickly discern that there is no actual threat.

By harnessing knowledge about fear, haunted houses can create the illusion that they are unsafe, despite being completely safe. This parallels a larger phenomenon where relatively safe experiences, such as

being vulnerable with someone or holding a particularly large spider, are viewed as unsafe.

Even if you don’t identify as an adrenaline junkie, fear can be a growing experience. Sharing fear with someone can bring you closer together and facing your own fears can help you move past them, with research supporting the idea that regular exposure to a feared stimulus results in habituation and decreased fear.

Far from being exclusively negative, fear can be exciting, novel, part of a growing experience, or even have a pleasant aftermath. Halloween may bring something we all fear — fear itself — to the forefront and allow us to experience it in new and more enjoyable ways.