They’ve learned that when they hear a whistle that they have done something correctly and that a reward will follow. They soon associate the whistle with the food (think Pavlov’s dogs) and react positively when they hear it. We teach this bridge early in their training by blowing the whistle whenever we hand a fish to the animal. With our marine mammals we can use a whistle as a bridge to let the animal know that it has done something correctly and that their reward will follow. Sometimes it may be awkward or impossible to get the reward to an animal exactly when they do the behavior you want (it would be difficult to toss a fish to a sea lion that’s in the middle of a back flip), so you have to have some way of bridging the time between when the correct behavior was done and when the reward is given. He loves to work with his trainers even when he’s not hungry. Parker the sea lion is a prime example of this. Yes a rubber ducky! Even the fun of the training session itself can be a reward for the animal. I once knew a bomb sniffing dog whose favorite reward for finding explosive material was to be allowed to play with her favorite rubber ducky. However for some animals, other things like a pat on the head or a favorite toy may be used as a reward. So when they do a behavior correctly like placing their paw on a target pole when asked, they receive a clam as a reward. They will do just about anything to get their tasty clam reward. For instance, our sea otters are very food motivated. In marine mammal training we call it using positive reinforcement.įor many animals its food that makes them happy. Give a positive reaction for a behavior done correctly and don’t give any reaction (sort of a mini time-out) when they behave incorrectly. #Lion blogo how toHere in a nutshell is how to train an animal-Make it a happy experience when an animal does what you want them to do and don’t give any feedback when they don’t. So I’ve learned to put it in more personal terms. Well, if I were to start talking about operant conditioning, stimulus-response, BF Skinner, discriminative stimulus, primary and secondary reinforcement, least reinforcing scenario and variable and non-variable reinforcement I usually end up getting a lot of blank stares back. One of the questions that I hear a lot as a volunteer marine mammal trainer is how do we teach the sea otters, seals and sea lions to do all the neat behaviors that they see during a presentation and how can they get their own pets to behave so well.
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