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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.

Training a 35 Pound Rodent? Oh My!

Training a 35 Pound Rodent? Oh My!

I’ve started volunteering at the Heard Museum with ORCA (a lab in UNT’s behavior analysis department that focuses on animal training).  One of the species we worked with on my first trip to the Heard was the Patagonian cavy, a 35 pound  South American rodent. I’ll admit, before going out there, I really had no […]

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Animals in captivity

Zoos, aquariums, wildlife parks, sea world, nature centers, personal pets, we encounter animals around us all the time. Many of the wild animals we encounter today (especially in zoos and aquariums) are bred in captivity, rather than collected from the wild. Animals have a host of needs that must be met in captivity. If the […]

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What animals can’t we train?

A smart trainer can theoretically train any behavior that an animal is physically able to perform and mentally able to understand. The folks at the New England Aquarium are taking this task seriously, and they’ve been training all sorts of behaviors to some of the most unlikely species! They’ve recently been working on target training […]

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What’s a good reinforcer for an elephant?

Regarding finding valuable reinforcers: “One keeper I met learned that an elephant will perform for a single miniature marshmallow.” This is from Temple Grandin’s latest book, Animals Make Us Human. (I also blogged recently about her discussions on introducing scary objects and stereotypical behaviors.) I find many people object to adding a clicker to their training […]

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Amazing animals from the WEIT blog

I really like Jerry Coyne’s blog. (Coyne’s a University of Chicago professor, who I actually had for a bio class. He’s recently started a blog to promote his new book Why Evolution Is True.). Over the past few days, he’s posted some links of some really awesome animals, you should check them out. Sheepdogs and […]

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