Page 160 - Zoo Animal Learning and Training

132 7 The Art of ‘Active’ Training

VetBooks.ir they are worried that the animal might forget two minutes to come inside. The next week
the animal might take 10 minutes to come
the behaviours. Animals remember behav-
iour in proportion to their practice and rein-
animal takes longer, but the keeper still rein-
forcement history. They rarely forget out of the pool to go inside. Each time the
behaviour with strong reinforcement history, forces the behaviour, it increases the chances
but they do lack motivation under certain the latency will continue or get worse.
conditions. When trainers run through an Similarly, an animal that once held its shoul-
animal’s repertoire on a daily basis, often der against the bars for three minutes pulls
these training sessions involve the animal away at two minutes but may still receive
doing quick, short duration, performances of reinforcement for ‘a good effort’. Soon the
many behaviours in succession. This rapid‐ animal is pulling away at one minute, then
fire performance of behaviours serves little 30 seconds, and soon the behaviour is no
useful purpose for husbandry or medical longer useful for injections. It is important
procedures and may even decrease perfor- for trainers to hold to criteria and only rein-
mance of these important behaviours in the force full‐criteria behaviour, even if they have
future. Short duration practice of a behav- to devote an entire training session to
iour that requires long duration performance rebuilding duration behaviour through suc-
to be useful for medical procedures can be cessive approximations of increasingly long
counterproductive. It is far better to do fewer duration of a behaviour.
behaviours at long duration performance
than to do several behaviours at short dura- 7.3.9 Short Window of Opportunity
tion, which are below criterion for intended
purposes of the behaviour. Motivating operations for animals in human
During maintenance schedules is when care are different from their wild counter-
some behaviours regress and performance parts that respond quickly to environmental
drops off to a point that a bit of ‘tune‐up’ may stimuli, often to obtain food or to keep from
be required to get the behaviour back to a becoming someone else’s food. Consider a
high level of stimulus control. For instance, brown bear (Ursus arctos) hunting salmon in
there is a tendency in some trainers to allow a stream. If the bear moved like many of its
the animal additional time to perform a counterparts in zoos it surely would not
behaviour that has lost some of its fluency. catch many fish. The only thing keeping a
From a primate that used to perform with brown bear in a zoo from moving as fast as
crisp response now taking 30 seconds to pre- its wild counterparts is motivation, which is
sent its shoulder, to a bear taking 30 minutes created through reinforcement history. The
or longer to shift inside, latency is a common bear at the zoo has learned the keeper will
problem in training programmes at zoologi- leave the door open for at least 30 minutes,
cal facilities. and the same type and quantity of food will
Poor performance of behaviour is often probably be waiting inside, so what’s the
caused by lack of practice, poor motivation, hurry? However, if the keeper opens the door
or trainer errors associated with reinforcing of the shift cage and then closes the door
behaviour below criteria. It is often the case after one minute, the bear will lose its oppor-
that trainers will unwittingly reinforce grad- tunity to come inside for the food reinforcer.
ually decreasing criteria of behaviour. For Through this ‘limited hold’ contingency
instance, an animal that once shifted within (Pierce and Cheney 2013), the bear learns
30 seconds of the door opening, maybe takes the consequence of staying outside when the
45 seconds to come inside because it was dis- door opens is the lost opportunity to eat the
tracted by animal activity in the next exhibit. food. This short window of opportunity to
The following day the animal may be sleep- gain the food resource will give the bear a
ing in the soft grass on a sunny day and take reason to perform more quickly in the future.