Why do zookeepers train lions

Fliss asked Steve for help and advice on training lions and came away with three new training programme ideas to try with Hugo and the pride. As part of the conference they spent a day at the West Midlands Police dog headquarters. Here they got to meet six week old puppies, adult service dogs and see demonstrations on how the service dogs are trained and worked.

Animal training techniques were discussed by keepers from all over the world including America, Russia and Tanzania and the conference has given Fliss and Craig lots of ideas to share with their zoo keeping colleagues to apply to the animals they work with.

Much like students in a classroom, one animal may pick up on a behavior very quickly, while another animal will require a completely different approach to training the same behavior. Patience and problem solving skills are essential!

This holds true to our three very unique lions. Chester is very food-motivated, sometimes awaiting his next treat before finishing the one he has just received. If he is ever momentarily confused, however, he can easily become frustrated. For this reason, his sessions are tailored to be quick, with each behavior being highly rewarded and new behaviors being divided into small steps rewarded frequently along the way. Of the four quadrants, positive reinforcement is the best method for creating behavioral change in an animal.

While all quadrants will modify an animal's behavior when utilized correctly, some are frequently unpleasant like positive punishment , and positive reinforcement is the only quadrant through which you are specifically communicating to the animal you're training what it needs to do to be successful and rewarding it for making that choice. There's no confusion generated by being told what not to do without being given any information about what to do instead, and no brute physical manipulation or stressful handling by the trainer to achieve the behaviors they want.

If the animal becomes frustrated or confused, the trainer just goes back to something the animal knows well until the animal is successfully engaged again, and then goes back to the last step of what they were working on before that the animal is confident with.

That type of interaction builds a strong relationship between the animal and its trainer s , because the entire experience is designed intentionally to be positive for the animal.

Anything an animal values can be a reinforcer, which leaves lots of room for trainers to be creative and consistently change up what they're rewarding animals with - which makes the whole experience more engaging and exciting for the participants. Some animals will do anything for a favorite snack, but for others a primary reward might be a scratch behind the ears or a chance to play with a favorite toy.

Zoo animals are never deprived of anything to encourage them to work for it - instead, reinforcers function like extra special bonuses during the day. Orcas at SeaWorld Orlando receiving different types of reinforcement: the whale on the left is getting a tactile reinforcer in the form of a pouring watering can, whereas the whale on the right is being tossed a chunk of jello as an edible reinforcer.

A cheetah at Busch Gardens drinks hot chicken broth - his favorite reinforcer - from a squirt bottle during a public demonstaration. The most imporant aspect of using primarily positive reinforcement training is that animals are always engaging voluntarily.

Zoo animal training sessions are always set up so that the animal chooses if it wants to come over for the session, and it only stays as long as it feels like engaging. When the animal walks away, the training session is done. Most of the time, animals come over immediately because they like training: there's a lot of research that shows animals will choose to work because it's interesting and engaging even when they have everything they already need, and it's the same for training sessions.

Zoo animals are motivated to engage in training by their relationship with their trainer, and the fact that they're doing novel and complicated work while receiving a paycheck in whatever reinforcer counts as "currency" for that specific individual. Does this mean that there are some days animals would rather do other things and just don't engage?

And while it may be a little frustrating for the animal keepers to not be able to train that day, that's just how it goes - they feed and care for the animal like normal, wait until the animal decides they want to come over for a training session, and then use unique and special reinforcers to make it super awesome and worth the animal's time.

The great thing about using operant conditioning techniques for training is that they are able to be generalized to literally any species of animal. The quadrants indicate what kind of stimulus needs to be added or removed to a situation to change behavior - it's up to the trainer to figure out what will be successful with each species they want to work with.

In order to do so, the trainer needs to understand a lot about the natural history of the species they're looking to train, as well as the specific personality and preferences of the individual animal they'd be working with. Some animals, like snakes, eat really infrequently, so a training plan for them has to take into account that food-based reinforcers can only be used at most once every couple of days.

Either this means that the trainer finds an alternate reinforcer the snake will work for which doesn't always exist , or they just accept that training behaviors with that snake might take much longer than it would with a mammal. And that's fine - that's just how snake training goes, and zookeepers work with that rather than trying to force it to change.

Other animals might need a modified training session because their species or specific individual life history prevents them from being able to perceive the "marker" cue called a bridge that trainers use to tell them when they've completed a behavior correctly.

A flash of light is often used to bridge fully aquatic or deaf animals, and an old animal with reduced hearing and sight might have a tactile bridge.

The method of successful reinforcer delivery is also factored into how training situations work with different species. Primates can frequently just be handed food directly once they have a good relationship with their trainer, but large carnivores are generally fed meat treats from tongs or a long stick to make sure they don't accidentally take a a finger along with it. Cetacean trainers generally throw food directly into the open mouths of their animals, but a blind sea lion might require the food to be touched to her nose so she knows where it is in order to grab it.

Fish are generally fed reinforcers directly from a stick, to ensure the correct animal in the tank actually gets the reinforcer that was meant for it, as well as to keep excess food from falling to the bottom and being wasted. The keepers who are training that day will collect all the things they need for the session: a variety of reinforcers, whistles or clickers to use as a bridge, tools or props needed for specific behaviors, and any required safety gear for being in close proximity with animals.

They'll take the whole kit over to the space designed as a training area and get set up, and then call over the animal being trained. What happens during that session will depend on a lot of factors: the experience of the trainer, the relationship between the trainers and the animal, and what the current training priorities are, as well as potentially how the animal is feeling that day, the behavior of conspecifics, and what the weather is like.

A selection of things that might be brought to a training session with a cetacean: a bucket of fish, a soft tactile brush, a favorite toy, chunks of unflavored gelatin, and a whistle for use as a bridge cue. Long before trainers start actually working on behaviors with an animal, they have to first establish a positive relationship with them.

This starts just by spending time with the animal, being around at the fence line so the keeper becomes familiar, and then they might progress to feeding the animal or shadowing their existing trainers during sessions.

Once the animal responds to the potential trainer's approach in ways that indicate positive excitement and interest, the person is finally able to start working on training. A California sea lion at the Turtle Back Zoo waits as its trainer reaches for a piece of fish during a session. New trainers first start by being 'transferred' the behaviors an animal already knows how to do for other people.

This ensures that the new trainer is aware of what the animal has already learned and that what they're doing is consistent with the work of the other trainers.

If a new trainer's criteria for a successful behavior is suddenly different than what the animal has learned is expected of it, that can be really frustrating for the animal; this can lead to behavioral problems during training sessions or a lack of interest in engaging with training sessions at all.

As a result, new behaviors are generally taught by one person or by a small collaborative team until they're solid, and then slowly all of the animal's other trainers are taught how to ask for and reward it correctly. All "training in" of new people is done at a pace that ensures that both staff and the animal are comfortable with each step before asking them to proceed to the next - this is especially true with any behaviors that involve any sort of contact between the trainer and their animal, or any work done without barriers between the two.

Once any new team member is up to speed with all of the extant behaviors an animal knows, they might get to start working on something new. A trainer at Tiger World demonstrates to a training class how to appropriately present a reinforcer to a large carnivore.

In order to work on a new behavior, trainers generally have to draft a formal training plan and submit it to their area lead or the zoo's behavioral husbandry department, if they have one. This will detail the processes through which the behavior will be achieved and proofed, and what criteria will be used to determine when the animal is ready to move onto the next step. Sometimes these plans also list types and amounts of reinforcers to be used during the training, so that it can be double-checked that they're appropriate for instance, to make sure calorie intake is appropriate or to make sure a food a specific animal can't eat isn't accidentally included.

Once approved, the person working on the new behavior will keep records of their training sessions in which they detail everything that happened during the session. These go into the rest of the animal's records, so that other team members and management staff can stay appraised of anything that might be influencing an animal's behavior. New behaviors are generally taught through a process called shaping, where the trainer starts by cuing a behavior the animal already knows how to do, and then slowly over time changes the criteria for getting a reinforcer to something just a little bit closer to the goal behavior.

Over time, the desired behavior is "shaped" through these gradual approximations. A keeper at the Twycross Zoo works on an approximation for a voluntary injection behavior with a chimpanzee. Once the animal is comfortable being sitting calmly while being poked in the shoulder with a finger, the keeper might progress to using a dowel, then a syringe without a needle, then a blunted needle, and finally a sharpened needle that actually gives the chimp a poke.

A successful training program can touch every aspect of a zoo animal's life. A majority of the training zoo animals engage in is geared towards voluntary medical participation, but trained behaviors also teach animals how to be better mothers , help zookeepers complete their daily routine, allow animals to educate guests through a demonstration, assist in moving animals around the facility easily, and are sometimes just a fun and enriching activity for the animal to engage in.

One of the first behaviors every zoo animal is taught is "target training. Target training is a very fundamental behavior in zoo training programs because it is a great building block for shaping most of the other behaviors an animal will learn in its lifetime. Targets can also be useful for when training at a distance, or in the water. A long target pole allows a trainer to cue an animal into a specific position without sharing space with them directly, or having to get too close.

Cetaceans are frequently directed to a specific area of the pool to perform a behavior through a target pole being slapped on the water, and target objects hanging above the pool on a line are used to shape aerial behaviors. A North American river otter at the Aquarium of the Bay doing a "wait" behavior while in position for a nose target. Targeting is a particularly useful behavior to teach aquatic animals, because it allows them to be fed directly from a target pole - this allows aquarists to ensure all of the fish in a tank get something to eat, and lets them measure the amount of food each fish is getting.

An African elephant at the Cameron Park Zoo doing a "trunk target" behavior to a zookeeper's hand. A skink at the Franklin Park Zoo doing a "nose target" behavior while on a perch for a public demonastration. How many miles do Americans drive per day. What institution insures individual banking accounts. Which of these is the best description of fixed expenses. Calculate the simple interest you would receive in five years on a savings account that earns 7.

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