Training is an important part of animal care here at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium!
Our expert teams work closely with the animals to train them on various behaviors to help provide them with the best care. During these bi-monthly segments, we will focus on a training behavior and how animals around the Zoo demonstrate it.
Have you ever had an experience with an animal that ignited a passion or curiosity and became a lasting memory?
The mission statement at the Columbus Zoo is Empowering People. Saving Wildlife. Our hope is to create a passion amongst Zoo visitors that will empower them to support animal conservation efforts, be it here locally or abroad. One of the ways we achieve this is by providing guest experiences beyond what you might see on a daily visit to the Zoo. This month’s Training Tales is about how we train our animals for those guest interactions.
Not every animal at the Zoo participates in a guest experience. The animals in our professional care always have free choice on whether they want to participate in guest experiences, and keepers always make sure to keep the training sessions positive for both animals and guests. During many of the experiences, guests usually go through a small explanation of the rules that they need to follow when working around the animals. These rules are important for guest safety and animal well-being, as many of these experiences are part of our daily animal care. Our goal is to make these experiences enjoyable and enriching for the animals and guests.
You might be wondering what training goes into getting an animal ready for an experience! Well, it depends on the experience!
- Some animals come out and have their own “routine” that they do in front of guests. For example, the animal will come out to a certain spot (or station) to receive food or so guests can take pictures. The first step in their training is to learn the routine of the course, which usually involves a series of target training sessions.
- For other experiences like the Elephant Bath, it is a little different. Bathing is part of the elephants’ weekly routine, so the main hurdle is getting the elephants comfortable with guests helping in this experience instead of their keepers. To begin this process, elephant keepers reach out to other departments throughout the Zoo and ask for volunteers to assist with the elephant bathing experience…what a tough gig, right?! Once the elephants are familiar with fresh faces, we open up the invitation for our guests to sign up. Many experiences throughout the Zoo follow this same process, which is great for the animals and other keepers as they get to experience the incredible training their fellow coworkers are working on. The training might differ depending on the experience.
If you are interested in seeing the different experiences the Zoo provides, be sure to check out our website. Thanks for joining us for our final Training Tales for 2023! Be sure to stop back in 2024 to see what else our amazing animals can do.
