This lemur had a long reinforcement history for jumping on shoulders. The team often had a hard team keeping him off of their shoulders or getting him to leave. This is a very condensed clip of a session of teaching him there is value in staying on a perch and also working on redirecting when he is tempted to leap to a shoulder. I also wanted to test if we had built up enough reinforcement history that he would leave a shoulder when prompted. However, he didn’t even want to offer leaping to a shoulder by the end of the session, which is a good thing! In an ideal world, team members would watch his behavior and reinforce for staying on perches and catch him in the act of doing the right thing before he misbehaves. We hope to avoid asking an animal to present undesired behavior first in order to present desired to gain reinforcers so this pattern doesn’t get repeated, but it was likely keepers might find themselves in this situation at some point. And for some, being on the shoulder may not be an undesired behavior, just one they would prefer only happens when cued and that the animal will leave when cued. This is why practicing the behavior of leaving the shoulder can have value as well. Do you want to train lemurs with me, Annette Pedersen and Dr Kirstin Anderson Hanson? Join us at the EAZA Intro to Animal Training Workshop in Valencia, Spain Sept 17 https://www.eaza.net/assets/Uploads/Academy/Courses/TTZP-FLYER-2.pdf?inf_contact_key=5cd462ba5e3daca2128edbcbdcfc7367 To learn more about solving behavior problems with zoo animals join me in Warsaw, Poland Sept 29 https://ethoplanet.com/en/kursy/seminar-with-barbara-heidenreich/ #lemurtraining #addressingbehaviorproblems #animaltrainingworkshop https://www.instagram.com/p/B2MwC_RFWeL/?igshid=1jbf79yadvwrn
