Halloween pumpkins are not just for guests at Walt Disney World. The resort’s animals got their own round of pumpkin enrichment for Halloween, and a new video shows a zebra, a giant anteater and a sea turtle working over carved jack-o’-lanterns in their habitats.
Walt Disney World’s animals are celebrating Halloween with special pumpkin enrichment!
— Drew Smith (@DrewDisneyDude) October 31, 2026
Their fall enrichment program promotes good digestive health and encourages natural behaviors. 🎃
Drew Smith shared the clip on Halloween morning. It carries one simple on-screen line, “Serving up some frightfully fun enrichment,” and moves quickly from one habitat to the next.
What Is In The Video
It opens on an antelope nibbling greens piled on top of a grinning jack-o’-lantern. From there, a bird dips its beak into a pumpkin filled with seeds, a zebra noses a carved pumpkin set on a rock, and a giant anteater sniffs at a pumpkin sitting in the dirt.
The underwater shots come from an aquarium, where a sea turtle swims past pumpkins resting on the sand while fish circle overhead. The clip closes on a pumpkin splashing into the water.
Why Disney Hands Out Pumpkins
This is not a one-off stunt. Disney’s animal care teams use enrichment to give animals something new to investigate, and the pumpkins are part of a broader program that, in Disney’s words, “encourages natural behaviors.” In 2023, keepers carved pumpkins and the Animal Nutrition team delivered them, and not every animal treats them the same way. Some eat them, some smash them, and some just get a new object to explore.
There is a health angle, too. Pumpkins carry vitamins and minerals like beta-carotene, potassium and vitamin C, and Disney has pointed out on the Disney Parks Blog that they are “loaded with fiber for good digestive health.”
More Than One Pumpkin
The scale can be bigger than one video suggests. In 2023, Disney said more than 200 pumpkins went out to animals across Walt Disney World, and Animal Kingdom’s giant Galápagos tortoises, named Phantom, Dracula, Mummy, Frankenstein, Wolfman and Creature, got a Pumpkin Day spread of their own.
Disney has not said where guests can spot this year’s pumpkins. In 2023, it pointed guests toward Disney’s Animal Kingdom, The Seas with Nemo & Friends at EPCOT, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge and Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground.
It has been a busy month for the animal teams at Animal Kingdom, which also welcomed Quartz, an albino wallaby joey, at Jumping Junction. The pumpkins are a lighter way to close out October.
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