Whether we are aware of it or not, as animal caretakers, we influence what animals in zoos and aquariums learn. In other words, as caretakers, we are teaching or training animals under our care all the time. In fact, Ramirez (1999) simply defines training as “teaching.” Sometimes we are aware of what we teach or train; we make conscious efforts to “train” animals to exhibit a variety of behaviors for husbandry, education, research, and entertainment purposes. However, sometimes we influence (train) animals’ behavior inadvertently through our actions, our husbandry routines, or through other stimuli present in the captive environment. In effect, animal care staff is always training and needs to be aware of that fact. Training is all about associations. The key to an optimal captive environment is to facilitate an animal’s opportunity to make associations that enhance its well-being.

As various applications for animal training are being developed and as training methods are being applied to an increasingly diverse number of species, it is important to discover what methods are appropriate and most successful for each species. There is a popular, and possibly misleading, philosophy among some animal caretakers that “training is training.” The concept of “training is training” comes from the behaviorist psychology literature related to learning theory. Early in the twentieth century, psychologists (e.g., B.F. Skinner 1938) suggested that the mechanisms of learning were the same in all animals (“learning is learning”). However, as comparative psychologists and ethologists studied learning throughout the twentieth century in a broad range of species, they discovered that while the basic concepts associated with learning were very similar, the natural history of an animal strongly influenced how that animal learned. This was called “constraints on learning” or “preparedness to learn” (Dewsbury 1978).