Behavioral Specialist

As a young keeper, I had the advantage of coming of age at a time when the concepts of behavioral enrichment and conditioning (training) were just starting to crack into the mainstream of keeping.  There was an increased understanding that it wasn't enough to keep animals that were physically healthy and breeding.  It was also the duty of the zoo to promote the mental and behavioral health as well as the physical.  Enrichment provides animals with an opportunity to live a life that more closely resembles that of its counterparts in the wild.  Training provides the animal with the opportunity to participate in its own care and reduces the need for stressful or invasive management practices.

In those early days, this was all being done piecemeal by whichever keepers were interested, whenever they could catch a break from their "real work."  It was very much seen as an extracurricular.  Even as recently as a few years ago, I worked with would complain that some keepers were just "playing" with their animals instead of doing the hard work of cleaning, diet prep, and groundskeeping.  To be fair, a lot of these earlier attempts and behavioral management of animals, while well-meaning and better than nothing, fell far short of their desired goals.

Now, most zoos recognize that behavioral management of the animals isn't a part-time hobby, nor is it frosting on the cake of animal welfare - it's a major component of the animals wellbeing.  To that end, loosely governed "playtimes" of keepers and animals have been replaced with more structured programs with defined goals and clearly measured outcomes, governed by science.  Many zoos now have an employee, or a team, who is responsible for the coordination of training and enrichment programs.  While much of the actually work is still done by the keepers, having this position enmeshed in the zoo's hierarchy not only ensures that the protocols are being implemented, but that they are being carried out uniformly and in a manner that is most likely to result in positive outcomes.

Much of the behavioral specialist's job takes the form of observation, either directly or through cameras, studying the activity budget of the animals, establishing behavioral goals, and working with the animal care team on how to implement them.  Those goals might be trying to understand why an animal is engaging in an undesirable behavior and redirecting it towards a more natural behavior, addressing aggression or anxiety within a social group, or trying to understand why an animal might not be utilizing some aspects of its environment, such as avoiding a portion of its enclosure, thereby limiting itself from using all of the available space and features.  Then, there are the training goals, many of which are aimed at supporting medical care - dental checks, hoofwork, blood draws - all while trying to minimize the need for physical or chemical restraint, which can be dangerous and stressful for both the staff and the animal.

So yeah, as a field we've come a long way for tossing a boomer ball to the animals and calling it a day.