"The bottom line? You can't push an elephant around."
Few aspects of zoo animal care have changed so dramatically
over the course of my career as training.
While animals keepers have always trained their charges, the reasons for
and methods of training have changed enormously. Whereas zoo animals were once trained to
perform circus-like tricks (think bears on balls and chimps participating in
tea parties), they are now conditioned to perform behaviors to assist
zookeepers and vets in their care and management – entering crates, moving from
enclosure to enclosure, presenting body parts for inspection. Likewise, whereas training was once a matter
of punishment, it is now more likely to be done with positive reinforcement.
It is the use of training through positive reinforcement
that is the subject of Dr Grey Stafford’s book, Zoomility: Keeper Tales of Training with Positive Reinforcement. The title, a play on the words “zoo” and
“humility”, sum up the author’s philosophy.
He states that training in the past has been too dominated by the egos
of the trainers, trying to impose their wills on the animals. Animals, of course, are unlikely to always do
what we want them to, which then causes trainers to become frustrated, their
actions then becoming more confusing to the animals. Stafford advocates the use of positive
reinforcement (the offer of pleasing stimulus, or rewards, such as food treats,
toys, or affection) to the animals. His
underlying message is that training should be a respectful partnership between
keeper and kept; instead of thinking in terms of commands, we should think of
“requests.”
Of all aspects of zoo animal care – enrichment, nutrition,
breeding, exhibit design – I’ve always considered training to be my weakest
area, so I sought out this book with a great deal of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I found it to be something of
a disappointment. It’s not terribly
long, which is fine since what it does contain seems to be mostly repetition of
Stafford’s idea of “Zoomility” (which I have presented in the second paragraph
of this review… you’re welcome).
Shortly after finishing this book for the first time, I set
about a training project at work. Try
though I might, I couldn’t think of anything I took away from the book that
seemed particularly helpful or relevant to my training. The message was “be patient and treat the
animals with respect.” I was already
there. Sure, there are a few case
studies/suggesting protocols for how to start training specific behaviors (such
as crate training), but they were pretty basic.
I would have liked to have discussed more about the differences between
working with different groups of animals – the challenges of training an
aggressive chimp vs a flighty gazelle, for instance.
This book would have been very useful a generation or so
ago, back when the school of zoo training was undergoing it’s transition from
old show type performances to new behavioral conditioning. These days, it doesn’t seem to offer anything
profound. Stafford talks a lot about
punishment-obsessed keepers, which feels like something of a straw-man
argument, seeing how few of those I’ve actually met (and almost all of those
are older individuals who are probably nearing retirement from the field).
Don’t get me wrong,
“Zoomility” is a great concept – it just doesn’t need a whole book (even a
small one) devoted to explaining it.
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