Did you know that ALL animals can be trained? In this section, you’ll find stories and articles about training birds, goldfish, cats, dolphins, zoo animals, and more. We can learn a lot by training other species and by studying trainers who work with animals that we are not very familiar with.
Alright readers, here’s a challenge for you. Check out this youtube clip below of a raven, who is being trained to peck at a yellow bowling pin. He has two choices–peck yellow or peck blue. If he pecks the correct pin, he receives a bit of food as a reward. If he pecks the incorrect […]
by Martin Pettitt, on Flickr I volunteer with ORCA at the Heard Museum about once a week. (ORCA is a lab in UNT’s behavior analysis department that focuses on animal training.) One project for this semester is crate training the museum’s two blue and gold macaws. During the fall and spring, Texas can have crazy […]
Blaze is my star fish who I’ve been clicker training. (Actually, err, he’s a goldfish, but he is a star pupil!) I trained him a bit at first using the R2 fish training kit (see a video of his first few tricks HERE). He proved to be a smart fish and a fast learner for […]
I recently finished reading Irene Pepperburg’s most recent book, Alex and Me. When Irene Pepperburg first started working with Alex, many people scoffed and laughed at her. Parrots were thought of as “bird brains.” While it might be possible to teach them to repeat back answers to simple questions, the bird wasn’t actually “thinking” or […]
One of the most common arguments I often hear against clicker training for horses is that we “can’t use dog training methods for horses.” However, clicker training wasn’t originally invented for dogs (or dolphins either, as many people falsely claim). The principle of reinforcement, on which clicker training is based, was originally described and researched […]
I played just a bit this afternoon with the Mountain Coati at the Heard Museum. Coatis, which are close relatives of the raccoon, are found in South America and some parts of South Texas. This coati was a gregarious, agreeable sort of fellow, similar to most raccoons that I’ve met. We mainly worked on a […]
