Erin wrote a great post last year on tracking lemurs. Last month some of the keepers practiced their lemur tracking skills. Each of our lemurs wear a collar so that if they get out of their exhibit we can find them. I wouldn’t really let a real lemur out, so I put a tracking collar on a stuffed-animal and hide it somewhere. This is what they found:Read more
Posts tagged: #training
Kiwi and Craisins
Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since Keeper Cassidy has left, and I’ve taken over training (for the time being) the red ruffed lemurs. They are really neat to work closely with– such different personalities from the more hyper ringtails! It took a few weeks for Cassidy to transfer the lemurs over to me. First, I just stood there while she trained and watched her hand cues, listened to her verbals cues, and made sure I was noting exactlyRead more
Lightning training update
Well it looks like our newest keeper, Sarah, has officially become Lightning’s new primary trainer! The three of us (Sarah, Lightning and I) took several walks together over the last few weeks to get her transitioned and for Lightning to learn that she is now one of his trainers. Lightning has made great strides with his behaviors recently, including doing things that he would never do before. One of these things is walking over unfamiliar objects or substrates. For instance,Read more
Training video
I’ve been meaning to take a video of the keepers and animals doing a training session and finally remembered last week. The keepers each work with a specific animal or group of animals: The red ruffed lemurs are working with Cassidy. The ring tail lemurs are working with Kristen The bears are working with Katy The barred owls are working with Jill Max the steer is working with Kent Lightning the donkey is working with Erin Chummix goat is workingRead more
EnrichBits: Training
EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment Kristen doing some operant conditioning with the ringtail lemurs Marilyn mentioned operant conditioning in her latest post about Gus the Bear, so I wanted to explain it a bit further. You can click here for a technical definition of operant conditioning, but it can really be summed up with one word: “training”. Training is the final big area of all those important enrichment categories (remember?…exhibit design, olfactory, visual, auditory, tactile, social, novel objects,Read more
black bear escape!
It’s not really what you think. Last week I set up a drill for the Keepers. It’s what we call “emergency training”. The keepers stay after work and they are presented with some sort of scene. I would never really let the “real” bears out, so I had to find alternates. You can see “Ursula” to the right and “Gus” below. These are two of the bears they had to find. I basically told the keepers that there were twoRead more