Training is an important part of animal care here at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium!
Our expert staff 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.
Say you want to go somewhere you have never been or do something you have never done. What is the first thing that most people do?
If you’re like me, you will ask for directions or look up to see how others do it. In animal training, we look for ways to communicate with our animals or give directions, and this is where the “target” comes in. The “target” allows us to tell an animal where to go or how to position their bodies. In many cases, the target becomes the building block for more advanced behaviors such as voluntary x-rays or voluntary blood collections. In this blog, we are taking a glimpse into the many different ways the target is used at the Columbus Zoo.
Target training can be simple to start and can be done with your pets at home. First, find your target, which can be anything from a spot on the wall to a tennis ball at the end of a stick. Anything can be a target, as long as the animal understands that when it interacts with the object to the desired criteria, they will get a reward. It’s that simple!
After the basics are down, you can move on to targeting specific body parts like the hip, which will help the animal get into different positions to present different sides of the body.
Some of the examples shown in our video include elephant Frankie being targeted into position to x-ray his feet, target training with cougar Poppy, the North American river otters working on holding against the target for an extended amount of time, and using the target to move greater one-horned rhino Brian around his habitat to present his sides.
Our tamandua, Isla, voluntarily participates in programs where guests can get an up-close encounter with her. Zookeeper Taylor said, “Isa is target trained. The behavior is generalized to her environment (back-holding, outdoor yards, and public aisle). Isa does the targeting behavior in the yards for guest engagement and exercise. Then, using the target training, I trained a new behavior with her in the public hallway where she comes out on her own, follows a path, gets fed by guests, and returns home. Once she learned the path, I faded out the target in the hallway. Her target is scented with vanilla extract due to her poor eyesight but great sense of smell. When she was still learning, it appeared that she relied on our body position first to find the target, so we added the scent and made much more progress.”
Thanks for joining us for another addition to our Training Tales series! The training at the Zoo doesn’t stop here–we still have other behaviors to share in the coming months. Be sure to stop back again soon to see what else our amazing animals can do!
