Hey all! Have you ever wondered, “How did they get that animal to DO that??” It’s all about contingency management. What’s a contingency, you ask? A contingency is a relationship between a response (or a behavior) and some environmental consequence. (And by consequence, I don’t mean the normal, everyday definition of that word…like when a small child does something wrong and the parents say, “You’re going to get a consequence!” Nope, that has an implication that consequences are always bad.) Read more
Posts tagged: #animals
Introducing Myself
Hello, Museum of Life and Science Family! Sherry already did a Spotlight post on me, but I wanted to introduce myself to everyone. I’m Dr. Julie Grimes, the Behavior Management Consultant for the Museum of Life and Science. I have a company (well, it’s really just me and my cell phone, but the IRS keeps insisting it’s really a company) called Animalworks, LLC that provides Behavior Management services to institutions with animals in captivity. I’ve worked with zoos, museums, scienceRead more
QuikPost: hoarders
The last couple of days we have been watching our muskrats closely because we were concerned one of them may have been acting a bit lethargic. So you can imagine what a pleasant surprise it was to see them both running around the exhibit early this morning! Most of our visitors that come regularly usually only see our muskrats sleeping in their wooden house. That’s because they tend to be most active in the morning (at least for the timeRead more
Trash anyone?
Anyone who has been in the animal keeping profession knows that part of the job includes the unfortunate task of pulling trash out of the animal exhibits. On some level it is expected that a random object will occasionally be found in an animal’s enclosure, due to a visitor accidentally dropping something and not being able to recover it (please don’t try to retrieve the item yourself!). However, we have noticed the amount of trash in the exhibits increase significantlyRead more
What a prize!
If you visit the museum often, you will soon notice the “new” yellow horse trailer sitting at the entrance of the farmyard. The trailer is not new literally, but it is new to us! And it was actually given to us as a donation after keeper Sarah did lots of searching on line and in the papers. We have never had a trailer of this size, but now that we do it will open up a world of opportunities for usRead more
QuikPost: Just a little newspaper and flour…
Throughout the year, the animal department has groups of people from different places that want to come volunteer their time with us for a few hours… kind of like community service. Often times these groups (usually anywhere from 6 to 20 people) are from various schools or colleges in the area. The group projects may consist of doing anything from mulching the farmyard to cleaning enrichment toys at the bear house. Our most recent group project was based around makingRead more