Updates From the Zoo's Lion Keepers: Training the Cubs
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January 14
If you were watching the lion cub cams this morning you may have caught a glimpse of the cubs' first training session! Rebecca and Kristen, two of the keepers, started with the basics: loading the whistle, name recognition, and targeting.
Keepers train animals through positive reinforcement (remember operant conditioning theory from psychology class?). Positive reinforcement means that when the animal demonstrates the desired behavior asked for by the trainer, it is given a reward. With the lions, the reward is usually food—the primary reinforcer. To mark the exact moment that the desired behavior occurred, many trainers use either a whistle or clicker—the secondary reinforcer.
The cubs must first learn what the whistle represents, so the first training exercise today was called “loading the whistle.” For this exercise, the cubs just sat back and received a little meatball each time the whistle was tweeted. Name recognition was then tied into this exercise, so before each tweet, a cub's name was called out and it was rewarded for giving us its attention. The third exercise was targeting. We place a target (a training tool that looks like a pole with a buoy on the end) up to the enclosure and the cub must touch its nose to it. As soon as it does, the whistle tweets and the cub gets a meatball. Eventually the cubs will learn to follow the target and in the future, this exercise will be useful for training more difficult behaviors.
Lelia was the only cub who choose not to participate today, but the rest of the cubs did really well on all of the exercises!
Here's a clip from the web cam of one of the cubs being trained.
