ramat gan (ap) | When Passover comes around, even gorillas in Israel keep kosher. In line with many other Israelis busy cleaning their homes to remove leavened foods for Passover, the Safari Park Zoo near Tel Aviv does the same.
Since the zookeepers and handlers cannot touch any leavened products during the weeklong holiday that marks the Exodus from Egypt, the gorillas and other animals are also fed matzah.
Accustomed to eating a slice of bread with cream cheese every morning, beginning this week the gorillas and other animals at the safari were fed matzah instead, said Emelia Turkel, the zoo’s curator.
“This turns out to be an interesting time for the gorillas and for the other animals because they get a bit of a change in diet,” Turkel said. “We call this environmental enrichment, Jewish style.”
The zoo has always fed the animals matzah during the Passover holiday, Turkel said, but try to limit their intake to just one or two crackers a day to prevent them from suffering from the most common side-effect of matzah — constipation.
“If they eat too much, it does cause stomach problems, so we hope that our public this week will not be feeding their own matzah to the animals,” Turkel said.