Zoo Animal Learning and Training

Vicky A. Melfi, Nicole R. Dorey, Samantha J. Ward, Vicky A. Melfi, Nicole R. Dorey, Samantha J. Ward

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781118968550
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Zoology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Comprehensively explains animal learning theories and current best practices in animal training within zoos

This accessible, up-to-date book on animal training in a zoo/aquaria context provides a unified approach to zoo animal learning, bringing together the art and science of animal training. Written by experts in academia and working zoos, it incorporates the latest information from the scientific community along with current best practice, demystifying the complexities of training zoo animals. In doing so, it teaches readers how to effectively train animals and to fully understand the consequences of their actions.

Zoo Animal Learning and Training starts with an overview of animal learning theory. It describes the main categories of animal learning styles; considers the diverse natural history of zoo animals; reviews the research undertaken which demonstrates ultimate benefits of learning; and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches. It also shows how the direct application of learning theory can be integrated into zoo animal management; discusses how other factors might affect development; and investigates situations and activities from which animals learn. It also explores the theoretical basis that determines whether enrichments are successful.

• Provides an easily accessibly, jargon-free introduction to the subject
• Explores different training styles, providing theoretical background to animal learning theory as well as considerations for practical training programme – including how to set them up, manage people and animals within them and their consequences
• Includes effective skills and 'rules of thumb' from professional animal trainers
• Offers commentary on the ethical and welfare implications of training in zoos
• Features contributions from global experts in academia and the zoo profession
• Uniquely features both academic and professional perspectives

Zoo Animal Learning and Training is an important book for students, academics and professionals. Suited to senior undergraduate students in zoo biology, veterinary science, and psychology, and for post-graduate students in animal management, behaviour and conservation, as well as zoo biology. It is also beneficial to those working professionally in zoos and aquaria at different levels.

Part B
Types of Learning That Can Be Achieved in a Zoo Environment

We learned in the previous section that animals learn from their surroundings. In this section, chapters will discuss how learning opportunities can be afforded in the zoo environment, enabling animals to learn throughout their lifetime. Specifically, we will dive into how training regimes based on the expression of wild‐type behaviours can lead to the creation of enrichment and improved management overall. We will also discuss how training, which certainly has its foundations in science, can benefit from good intuition; based on personal experience of training and animal behaviour, as well as derived from being well trained themselves. Thus we celebrate that training as an art and consider how this art can be integrated into the animal's daily management routine. Finally we will explore the human–animal interactions that occur in a zoo and how these might result in learning opportunities for the animals; and people.

5
What Is There to Learn in a Zoo Setting?

Fay Clark

5.1 Introduction

Contrary to the belief of many, animals can have a rich learning experience in a zoo setting. Learning can be defined as the process of adaptive change in a behaviour as a result of experience (Thorpe 1963). At face value, it may seem that animals housed in zoos have restricted learning opportunities; space restrictions and routine husbandry procedures remove environmental variation, choice, and control (Watters 2014). Whilst it is known that highly predictable husbandry routines can have detrimental effects on welfare (Bassett and Buchanan‐Smith 2007), zoos can still be highly variable environments in which animals are learning frequently. Environmental variability comes in the form of staff, volunteer, and researcher turnover; visitor presence; changing climate; and animals moving between exhibits for breeding programmes, exhibit developments or through the natural cycle of births and deaths. And in terms of fostering agency, in other words allowing animals to act independently and to make their own decisions (Clark 2018), modern zoos purposely provide animals with more choices and control over their daily lives through training and enrichment programmes (Westlund 2014; Young 2013).

Learning is a very broad topic intimately linked with memory and cognition (Shettleworth 2010); for that reason I have chosen to focus in on the three overarching questions posed by Shettleworth (2010): (i) what conditions/circumstances stimulate learning? (ii) what is being learned? and (iii) how does learning affect behaviour? This chapter will be a broad overview of the types of learning an animal may experience during its lifetime in the zoo, and the implications of these for their captive management. Although some learning opportunities occur at particular life stages, for example shortly after birth, at weaning, or at sexual maturation (Shettleworth 2010), other learning occurs on a daily basis, relating to the timing of food and cues associated with other events such as exhibit cleaning and veterinary checks. Animals are constantly being exposed to different stimuli and their motivations change too; and learning is, by definition, impacted by previous experience (Thorpe 1963).

5.2 Early Life

5.2.1 Embryonic Learning

We tend to think of an animal's learning journey beginning at birth, but in fact many mammals, birds, amphibians, and fish learn from the tastes, smells, and sounds that surround them during their prenatal development (Hepper 1996; Hepper and Waldman 1992; Sneddon et al. 1998). For example, superb fairy wren (Malurus cyaneus) mothers call to their eggs, and when an egg hatches, the nestling produces calls containing important characteristics of the mother's call. This embryonically learned ‘password’ bonds parent and nestling, and helps parents detect foreign cuckoo nestlings (Colombelli‐Négrel et al. 2012). Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) can ‘see’ (i.e. their visual system is active) several weeks before hatching; when researchers provided embryonic cuttlefish with images of crabs (a prey species) they had a significantly higher preference for preying on this species once hatched (Darmaillacq et al. 2008). Domestic dogs, amongst other mammalian species as well as birds, can learn food preferences from prenatal exposure to certain flavours in the mother's diet (Wells and Hepper 2006).

Even though embryonic learning studies have been undertaken under highly controlled laboratory conditions, the results are relevant to the same or similar species living in zoos. We should be mindful of providing zoo animals with appropriate prenatal signals; for example paying special attention to minimising the stressors perceived by gravid females, and providing meaningful conspecific, predator, or diet‐related cues they may learn from before birth. This could be particularly challenging for endangered birds cross‐fostered by other species (Conway 1988). The finding that young frogs and salamanders show adaptive behaviours such as shelter‐seeking cues learned before hatching (Mathis et al. 2008) has great implications for zoo endangered species breeding programmes where individuals may eventually be reintroduced to the wild (Crane and Mathis 2010; also refer to Chapter 12 on training and reintroduction).

5.2.2 Recognising Parents and Mates

Once an animal is born, it may need to recognise its parent(s) in order to receive care and begin to learn survival skills. This poses a challenge for zoos in rare cases where animals have to be removed from their mothers, shortly after birth for veterinary care or because the mother rejects them. Firstly, let me acknowledge that some behaviours are partially innate, dictated by an animal's genes, and partially learned from experience, either from interacting with the world or by being taught (Shettleworth 2010). Imprinting is a type of time‐sensitive learning which generally occurs within hours or days after birth with some genetic input, in which an animal gains a sense of identity. Filial imprinting refers to when a young animal acquires several of its behavioural characteristics from its parent. However, in the absence of a parent the animal will imprint on any moving stimulus (Sluckin 2017). The behavioural development of precocial birds such as geese and ducks under human care is particularly delicate. However, Horwich (1989) found that sandhill crane (Antigone canadensis) chicks could be successfully hand‐reared by humans, if the human form is disguised, and chicks imprinted on realistic models of their parents such as hand puppets with accompanying crane brooding calls. Other birds which have been hand‐reared by zoos using similar methods include California condors Gymnogyps californianus (Utt et al. 2007) and kakapo Strigops habroptilus (Sibley 1994).

A young animal also has to learn its kin and who to mate with, and there is evidence that the rearing environment is important for the development of mating preferences (Slagsvold et al. 2002). Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the characteristics of a desirable mate, which has very important implications for animals as part of zoo endangered species breeding programmes. Kendrick et al. (2001) found that domestic sheep and goats cross‐fostered at birth, then reared in mixed‐species groups, had social behaviour and mate choice more closely resembling their foster species than genetic species. Infant chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) reared by human caregivers, for the pu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part A: Demystifying Zoo Animal Training
• Part B: Types of Learning That Can Be Achieved in a Zoo Environment
• Part C: More Than A to B
• Glossary
• Index
• End User License Agreement