IN THIS LESSON

Choose to train an appropriate behavior for your animal

Maybe you want to get started on training, but you don’t know which behavior to teach first. Maybe you know which behavior you want to teach, but you’re unsure if your animal can learn it. Choosing the appropriate behavior is crucial to success in the training process.

Let’s break down some general behavior categories first:

Natural Behaviors: Behaviors an animal would be performing on their own in their natural environment.

E.g. Reinforcing a cat for scratching on an appropriate surface.

Cooperative Behaviors: Behaviors that help you care for your animal.

E.g. Training a giraffe to place their foot onto a block for regular hoof trimming.

Incompatible Behaviors: Behaviors that make it impossible to perform an undesirable behavior at the same time.

E.g. Training a sheep to station for a reward instead of charging a person as they clean their pen.

Maintenance Behaviors: Quick and easy behaviors that your animal knows well and you can consistently reinforce and go back to in order to keep your animal motivated through the training process.

E.g. If you’ve taught your dog to sit and he consistently performs that behavior accurately. You can go back to that behavior during the training process if your dog is becoming frustrated while learning a new behavior.

Behaviors should be more than just tricks.

When choosing a behavior to teach, it should be practical. Teaching animals tricks might be fun, but you run the risk of frustrating your animal if it’s something they cannot physically do without coercion. For example, zoos will teach animals to perform cool behaviors at demonstrations, but these are typically behaviors you will see animals do in the wild. The idea here is to showcase natural behaviors to help the audience learn more about that animal’s life strategies. In the past, organizations such as zoos and circuses would train animals to perform more outlandish behaviors such as riding a bicycle or walking like a human. These behaviors are not practical, not easy to train through positive reinforcement, and can actually lead to animals injuring themselves if they assume postures that aren’t natural for them. This type of training has lost favor and many organizations won’t allow it anymore.

Where’s a good place to start?

A good place to start training is to prime the marker, or bridge as some may call it. The marker is a form of secondary reinforcement and is usually an auditory affirmation that the animal performed the correct behavior. Trainers typically use clickers, whistles, or phrases such as “yes!” or “good!” as their markers.

To prime the marker, you will click the clicker, blow the whistle, or say the affirmative word, and then immediately follow that with a primary reinforcer such as food. You will repeat this process until you notice that the animal is anticipating the reward whenever the marker is given.

The marker is used because it is quicker than fumbling for a treat when the animal performs the correct behavior. Ideally, you want to mark the behavior within 2 seconds of the animal performing it, so they make the association between behavior and reinforcement.

Which behaviors are appropriate for my animal?

Before you begin training, it’s important to do your research on the natural history of your animal. Which natural behaviors would they be performing in the wild? Which natural behaviors do they have a particular strength in? Is there a natural behavior they do on their own that you want to capture?

E.g. At a zoo, you may want to train a leopard to walk across a tree log to showcase how they use their tail for balance in the wild.

You may also want to figure out which behaviors are practical in their daily life. Is there a cooperative behavior that would help you care for them easier? Is there a cooperative behavior that would help them co-exist in a home better? Is there a behavior you need them to stop doing, in which case, what’s a good incompatible behavior to teach as an alternative?

E.g. At a lab animal facility, you may want to train a rabbit to hop onto a scale and stay still until you have read and recorded the weight.