The other day I received 2 books from Gabrielle Harris who works at Ushaka SeaWorld in South Africa (Read her guest blog HERE). The explained a situation where she tried to train a horse but the horse had trained her instead. The animal had given her a lesson and in Read more…
Cover photo: Simon Jonsson One of the most beautiful moments of an animal trainer’s life is to see the animals they work with giving birth to a new member of the family. I was lucky enough to see a couple amazing births happening right in front of my eyes. Some Read more…
Many of us know what a recall is or understand the idea of what it is supposed to be. Looking on the internet it basically comes down to a signal that makes the animals return to the trainer in any situation. This takes some training but let’s get back to Read more…
Extinction is a hot topic as of today. We really can’t ignore it. All animals involved! Every animal is special! – B. Andrews What is happening with the earth is a serious cause we can’t ignore. Still there are discussions out there if we should while nature shows us we Read more…
At Zoospensefull we talk very much about the variation we can give to the animals. Variation is not as hard as we think it is. If we just look at their food intake for example and start to think from there. We can use various types of food and we Read more…
Back in May this year I was with a friend of mine in Israel. That time when loads of things happened to that country in a short time. I’ve never been there before and was a bit biased with everything I heard about this country. I’m ashamed that I could Read more…
Positive reinforcement is not just applying an object or food source what helps increase the behaviour you want. It actually goes a lot further than this. Working in a zoo setting gives a whole different perspective to reinforcement for the animals. A go to at first is 9 out of Read more…
Cover Photo: Female chimp, Medina, is photographed at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Lake Victoria, Uganda. She is fond of clapping and swinging her hands when asking for food or anything of her interest and also complains when given less food. Whenever she sees anything from a point where she cannot Read more…
Im in love with using targets. We are using them for everything and all the time for shaping a various amount of behaviors. It’s the best tool after a bridge in my belief. Targets come in all shape and sizes. Training animals for match to sample might be as well Read more…
Did you know that the exact number of zoos and zoological type exhibits and collections around the world is actually unknown, but estimates have been made anywhere between 10,000 and 16,000 zoos worldwide? Among the larger professional regional zoo and aquarium associations, such as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Read more…
