Message from John Lehnhardt;
Animal Operations Director at Disney's Animal Kingdom® Theme Park

     
     I started my zoo career as an elephant and seal/sea lion keeper 25 years ago. At that time, training was considered by many zoo folks as a "dirty" word associated with circus acts and animals performing unnatural behaviors for the amusement of paying visitors. A few zoos had animal shows and even my former institution at the time had a "chimp tea party" at the Children's Zoo. Conditioning animals for certain behaviors often was called "taming them down." Frequently, negative reinforcement was the norm and handling and restraint was focused on chemical immobilization or physical restraint with ropes, nets or chains. Little training theory was known in zoological establishments, and structured training programs based on operant conditioning concepts were virtually non-existent.

Many good zookeepers were natural trainers, using instinct and observational skills to elicit useful behaviors from their animals and unwittingly applying operant conditioning in unstructured but sometimes effective ways.    Unfortunately, not everyone was intuitive or understood that everything you do around an animal potentially impacts its behavior, and that the keepers were constantly being trained by their animals to perform numerous acts, often for the animals' amusement.

What a difference a quarter of a century makes in our attitudes and understanding! Animal training has become a key component of all animal husbandry in the modern zoo and aquarium. Structured theory and action planning to set and reach training goals allow us to get the animals to help us take better care of them in much less stressful ways. Diabetic primates willingly allow daily injections, bull elephants in protected contact present their feet for trimming, and birds step on scales on cue from a distant keeper, allowing for safe, stress-free data gathering. Almost anything is possible today through effective training once the basics are understood and mastered.  All the animals involved in the process benefit, including the human ones.

This web site is dedicated to the advancement of training as a tool for better animal management. We hope you find it rewarding, stimulating, and helpful in improving the well-being of the animals in your care.

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