Imagine this, you are taking care of animals in a zoo, some in free contact (animals you enter the enclosure with) and some in protective contact. The exhibits are pretty big. You decide to train your animals, but then think, where do I start to get my animal to understand Read more…
For those of you who work in zoos, what if I told you that zookeepers don’t exist? In my current role at Kolmården Wildlife Park we try to train as many animals as possible. I am constantly working very closely with the keepers in a team, to help develop training Read more…
Cover Photo Credit: Aaron Gekoski My passion for training animals for conservation purposes is starting to grow. In the Zoo I work at, I get to do a lot more research training and become more skillful in conditioning animals to be ready for research projects. This gives me a whole different Read more…
Kolmårdens Wildlife Park is a zoo located south of Stockholm on the rocks of Sweden. Covering 370 acres they can call themselves the biggest zoo in Scandinavia. The zoo doesn’t have many species but the species they have are either housed in quite big groups or in mixed species exhibits. Read more…
Cover Photo: Successful animal training is about Communication and Motivation. Trainer: Anette Olsson, photographer: Björn Johansson. Orsa Björnpark. Is the animal you’re training responding to your requests? Doing the behaviour, as it were? Great! That means two things. You’ve successfully communicated what you want the animal to do, and The Read more…
Recently I passed by the dolphinarium in Kolmårdens Wildlife Park, I haven’t been there for a while so its always fun to go and see the animals. A great enrichment plan was recently applied and the trainers were excited to tell me about it. I decided to stay afterwards and Read more…
Within my career I’ve developed a different way looking at behaviors animals have. Some behaviors desirable some behaviors undesirable. Regardless of what behaviour it is and in what box we should put it I started to see how these behaviors could be solved or how they could be build up Read more…
Throughout my career I discovered that the phsycology of animals interest me most. Questions like why animals do their thing and why they have certain responses etc is an interesting part of why I enjoy what I do. Animal Training in general is a passionate part where I try to Read more…
In 2008 I started with my travel addiction. Seeing other places is just wonderful. I’m fortunate that I know quite some friends who share the same passion I have in the field and that actually allowed me to visit many different Zoos and Aquariums over the years. Throughout that time, Read more…
As human beings we like to discriminate animals due to their states in our lives. We like to say because the dog is in my house he should understand who is the boss. We like to show everybody how much we love our animals without knowing if they actually like Read more…