As animal trainers we continually communicate with our animals, through verbal and nonverbal communication. The things we say, our tone, gestures, body language, and facial expressions all play an important part in how we communicate. We want to empower our animals by using positive reinforcement strategies and we teach them Read more…
Cover Photo: Libby Eyre – Sydney Aquarium, Australia Some sort of relationship is needed for you to succeed as a trainer. Building a positive relationship with an animal can be difficult and take considerable amounts of time and effort. Depending on the animal will depend on the amount of effort Read more…
To be an effective trainer there are many steps we recommend you follow. To be successful and reach your goals we at Zoospensefull encourage you to plan your sessions. If training by yourself, a clear understanding of the steps or approximations you will be taking to reach your desired goal Read more…
Training animals comes with a lot of challenges. Most of these make us better trainers, but there is one in particular which could put you into potentially dangerous situations, and that is complacency. We use reinforcement strategies to build strong relationships through positive experiences. Training becomes fun and we want Read more…
One of the most important foundation behaviours to have at home and in the zoo, is the ability to separate your animals into other areas. Not only does this enable you to clean exhibits, enclosure maintenance, rotate paddocks, isolate animals for veterinarian procedures, but also create exciting enrichment programmes. With Read more…
As trainers, which include zookeepers and other animal care professionals, we often have a very close relationship with the animals we care for. Sometimes present for their birth, watching them grow up and mature, reproduce and even caring for them in their golden years results in a very strong, often Read more…
If you haven’t heard of PORTL yet where have you been? At Zoospensefull we discovered this awesome learning tool only about a year or so ago. Since we received our copy we have used their games in almost every workshop to get more engagement and learning from our participants. We Read more…
As animal trainers we have to think about many different things during our training sessions. It’s not just “good behaviour, reinforce” there is much more to it. As we train our animals we focus on the consequences to make sure the behaviour will happen again in the future. We know that Read more…
At Zoospensefull we constantly try to find ways of training that work best for both the trainer and animal. It often comes down to how strong you want the history of the behaviour to be. Do you want the behaviour occurring just once or every day, week or month? Knowing Read more…
At Zoospensefull we have worked with many zoos worldwide. One of our main objectives is to build a variety of successful training programmes. These programmes are both with free and protected contact animals. Even when we primarily train animals in a free contact scenario, we also recommend training animals to Read more…
