Hello from the Otter Side

Training is an important part of the relationship between a keeper and the species they work with. Not only is it a fantastic opportunity to work closely with an animal and build a bond of trust, but it is also essential to allow us to do medical checks and to aid husbandry with the least amount of stress possible. Lastly, training serves as brilliant cognitive enrichment improving the quality of life we provide for the animals in our care. Today we are going to take a behind the scenes look at a training session with our family of Asian small claw otters. The first thing to note about otters is how greedy for food they are! Something all otter species have in common is a fast metabolism relative to other mammals. This makes them eating machines, meaning food is a fantastic motivator. For this training session Alana uses a mix of Crayfish and crab’s legs to motivate the otters to demonstrate three key behaviours. Stationing, Target training and Open mouth. Stationing- This is a versatile technique that can be used for anything from training the otters to get into carrying crates to simply controlling a group of three otters during feeding sessions. We also see Alana getting Nipper and Bruce to turn on their station. This allows her to check their mobility and giving her a clear view of the whole otter. This is extremely useful for health checks. Target training- Another versatile and common technique used in the training of many species, target touching is a starting point for shaping many different behaviours. And provides a great way to build a baseline where the animal knows that interacting with the keeper leads to desirable consequences In the video we can hear Alana issuing verbal commands and once the behaviour is completed successfully he uses a clicker and rewards the otter with some food. The purpose of the clicker is to act as “a bridge” meaning the animal starts to associate the click with a reward.

Open mouth- The last behaviour we see is open mouth training with the matriarch of our family; Kisha. This is a new behaviour that Alana has been working on, but as we can see in the video Kisha is picking it up quickly. This behaviour is intended to allow Alana to check Kisha’s teeth in a safe and unobtrusive way.

I hope you all enjoy the behind the scenes video of this training session. No comments about my video editing skills, I’m learning!

Andrew

Would you like to know more? Here are some great articles and paper on some the topics discussed above! Otter specialist group training manual Melfi, V. (2013). Is training zoo animals enriching?. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 147(3-4), pp.299-305.