Many institutions train their animals for a variety of medical behaviours. In the marine mammal world, especially with pinnipeds, eye checks are of great importance. Before we explain how to train this behaviour, we have to understand why we need it? Often, training for eye drops is retroactive management. We Read more…
Aggression is very common in the animal world and is part of their natural behavioural repertoire. In spite of this, trainers often consider aggressive behaviour as unwanted. Animal trainers tend to have different views on whether aggressive behaviour needs to be extinguished or not. We can differentiate aggression between their Read more…
In almost all groups of animals there is a hierarchy. Some species in captivity are “unnaturally” in a group configuration, such as tigers or polar bears. When animals are displayed in unnatural group configurations they will still have a hierarchy between them. Some hierarchies are not easily visible but some Read more…
Most zookeepers today do enrichment and animal training on a regular basis. Nowadays, they are seen as standard husbandry practice. Many facilities have well-thought out enrichment and training programs. These programs have a main goal to improve the welfare of animals under human care. As Peter already wrote: “Everything we Read more…
The relationship with the animals we care for is important for further learning. We need the animals we work with to want to participate in training sessions. Often before starting a session we use a start of session signal and that tells the animal you’re ready. But what about when Read more…
The ability to recall animals in an emergency is becoming more and more important in modern zoos. Visitors seem to behave more recklessly often with selfies being more important than personal safety. The use of social media often encourages people to push their luck to get ‘the shot’. This behaviour Read more…
Animals have played an integral part in the lives of humans for thousands of years. It’s even thought that cavemen had and care for dogs, the ancient Egyptians and their relationship with cats depicted in hieroglyphics and there are well known tribes who worked with birds of prey and horses Read more…
Cover Photo: WONG MAYE-E/AP/TT As trainers we condition a lot of different behaviours, but sometimes we want to get rid of a behaviour instead. Teaching an animal a new behaviour is a lot easier than teaching the animal to not do a particular behaviour anymore. There are several strategies that Read more…
This past week Zoospensefull did some consultation work in a collection in Belgium. The team have a goal of flying their birds of prey without the use of jesses, a great way to raise the welfare of these animals to an even higher standard. More and more zoos and smaller Read more…
Over the past few years we’ve trained many different behaviours, with a variety of animals together with a variety of teams. These have been trained behaviours for different situations and purposes. But what makes a behaviour completely finished? The animal does the behaviour for a variety of reinforcers. When we Read more…
