There are many discussions around the use of punishment in modern animal training. Some are in favour of punishment while others are not. Here at Zoospensefull we fall under the ’not’ category of using punishment. The reason being we think that as professional animal trainers we should always try to Read more…
Mimicry is a shaping technique where mimicking is used to condition new behaviours. Either animals mimicking each other or animals mimicking their trainer. This technique has as the other ones its advantages and disadvantages. The trainer has to choose carefully and understand the process. by Peter Giljam The Social Experiment Read more…
There are many behaviours needed for a well-established training program. Foundation behaviours such as call overs, control, and stations help your program to develop, and increase the level of your behaviours. If you are interested in our top 10 foundation behaviours and their criteria, read about them here. Foundations for Read more…
Many of us deal with challenges everyday but there are some challenges where we have to become more creative. We found 3 stories about animals that have disabilities and the creative solutions to help them. A blind hedgehog that was trained with a scented target, a deaf and blind dog, Read more…
Training a wild ibex to wear a collar for research sounds like a simple behaviour but gave us quite a few challenges. Protected contact and small steps helped us on the way to reach the training goal. By Peter Giljam In 2018 Kolmården Wildlife Park was approached to assist in Read more…
There are 4 main ways we can shape behaviour: targeting, modelling, capturing and mimicking. Modelling is a common shaping strategy but have you ever thought about what it looks like and how it should work? Modelling is a technique where you physically manipulate the animal into the specific position or Read more…
As animal care professionals we try and have as many positive interactions with our animals as we can, through play, enrichment, and training that is based on positive reinforcement techniques. You build a strong relationship with the animal, so much so that it seems to enjoy seeing you and readily Read more…
The target is one of the best tools a trainer could have in their toolbox. We use targeting, in many different ways, all the time. The most common one we see is the stick with a ball on the end, but a scale, platform or station is essentially a ’target’ Read more…
Our personality is created by the experiences we have throughout our life. Whether you’re extremely confident, or have many insecurities, all of this was developed, and is shaped, by our experiences. If this can be the case for humans, what about our animals? When I’m walking through Kolmårdens Zoo, I’m Read more…
Cover Photo Credit: Kelli Ingles The ability to select individual animals out of a group is a useful behaviour to have and is one we call selection. The selection behaviour allows the trainer to have multiple animals, generally on stations, and be able to ask an individual animal to respond Read more…
