Elephants, Otters, and Beavers Get Into the Halloween Spirit at Oregon Zoo

It’s spooky season, which means people are going out of their way to add some fall decor to their spaces, which typically means adding a few festive pumpkins in and around the home. One zoo is proving that humans aren’t the only ones who get excited by this tradition by allowing some of its furry friends in on the fun.

The Oregon Zoo has shared a video of all of the ways its animals are enjoying a little fall flair by showing how some of the creatures enjoy interacting with the pumpkins left behind by the zookeepers.

From elephants to beavers, these animals are having “gourd times” this month thanks to the pumpkins that have been added to their enclosures. And it would appear that the humans are having just as much fun watching them.

The video has now gone viral, with more than 104,000 likes and hundreds of comments celebrating the creative ways the animals get to enjoy their treats. In fact, people are having a hard time deciding which animal’s approach to the pumpkins is the best.

Spooky Season Is Super Cute at the Oregon Zoo

Zoo officials wrote, “Let the gourd times roll” in the caption of the video, which includes clips of things like an elephant crushing a massive pumpkin, otters playing with carved jack-o’-lanterns, and a beaver taking a pumpkin stem for a swim. 

Each of the animals in the short video appeared to have received a pumpkin as part of an enrichment effort, allowing them to enjoy the gourds in their own special ways. For some (like the lemur), that meant using the pumpkin and the apples that were left inside of it as food.

For others, like the otter, that meant creating a game out of tossing the smaller gourds around.

The Cute Video Has a Lot of Fans

More than 630 people commented on the clip. “Now I want to grow giant pumpkins for elephants,” one person wrote.

“Of course the beaver went for the stick part,” another joked.

“Wow! I had no idea that so many different animals liked pumpkins! What fun they had,” another added.

According to CoolGreenScience, while a lot of wild animals love pumpkins, not all of them like to eat them. The website notes that some animals will play with them instead of eating them as part of their natural diet. That being said, it looks like all of the animals featured in the video from the Oregon Zoo loved interacting with the pumpkins in their own individual ways.