When Training Becomes Enrichment

Meet the people helping our wild neighbors.What does it take to help injured and orphaned wildlife? And what can the animals coming into rehabilitation tell us about emerging diseases?Join Coffee with the Critters LIVE from the Ohio Wildlife Rehabilitators Association Conference for a conversation with speakers and board members.Longtime wildlife rehabilitator and OWRA trustee Barbara Ray will introduce the work of wildlife rehabilitation. Dr. Sam Valerius will discuss emerging diseases and rehabilitators’ role in identifying wildlife health concerns. We’ll also hear about OWRA, the conference, and opportunities to learn through monthly webinars.

Positive-reinforcement training can be more than a way to teach a behavior. It can create opportunities for animals to:• make choices• solve problems• move and explore• communicate• exercise• interact socially• learn new skills• engage successfully with their environmentLara will talk about why training can function as enrichment, with practical examples across species.She’ll also look at an especially interesting question:Why might an animal sometimes choose training over another enrichment opportunity?

I’ll be talking about how positive reinforcement can support animal wellbeing.When I say wellbeing, I mean the animal’s quality of life.I’ll reference a newly published study that examined engagement with positive-reinforcement training as a potential indicator of positive welfare. I’ll use that research as a starting point to discuss something that sits at the center of much of my own work across species.I’ll be looking at things such as voluntary participation, willingness to engage, approach behavior, focus, eagerness, anticipation of the interaction, and what the animal does after the interaction ends.The bigger question is:Can an animal’s engagement help tell us something about that animal’s quality of life?

No set topic this week as Lara jumps on and answers questions.

Join Lara for another info packed Q&A about Parrot training, behavior, and enrichment. She’ll discuss what to observe, how to approach training challenges, and practical ways to encourage engagement with enrichment.

What happens when you combine dinosaurs, live reptiles, science, and hands-on wildlife education? You get Dino Buddies.I’m joined by Tiffany Johnson, founder and owner of Dino Buddies, a wildlife education company based in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, area.Tiffany and her team use live reptile ambassadors, animatronic dinosaurs, fossils, replicas, and interactive programs to make science approachable, exciting, and memorable for people of all ages.We’ll talk about how Dino Buddies got started, what goes into creating meaningful wildlife education experiences, the animals and audiences they work with, and how Tiffany has grown a unique idea into an award-winning outreach program.And yes, we’re going to talk dinosaurs. 🦖

We pay attention to what animals can see, touch, eat, climb on, move toward, and move away from. But what about sound?A newly published review examined research on human-generated noise and zoo animal welfare. The findings do not give us a simple rule that noise is always harmful. They do raise an important question:What changes in an animal's behavior when the acoustic environment changes?I'll talk about how sound may affect behaviors such as alertness, resting, foraging, social interaction, hiding, enclosure use, and participation in training.We'll also look at why saying an animal is “used to it” doesn't tell us very much unless we're actually observing and measuring behavior.

For this special Coffee with the Critters, Lara is joined by:• Dr. Jason Crean, biologist and Principal Investigator with the Animal Nutrition Laboratory at Saint Xavier University• Dr. Tatiana Tatum, geneticist and Principal Investigator with the Animal Nutrition Laboratory at Saint Xavier University• Dr. Jamie Abete, avian veterinarian at Niles Animal HospitalThey’ll talk about avian nutrition beyond simply asking what belongs in the bowl, including nutrition and health, whole foods, wild feeding ecology, foraging, behavior, reinforcement, the avian microbiome, and what current evidence can and cannot tell you.

Lara is joined by Dr. Lauryn Benedict, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Northern Colorado. Dr. Benedict studies animal communication and social behavior, including how birds use vocal signals in different social and environmental contexts. She is also part of the Many Parrots Project, an international research team studying parrot vocal learning and cognition.We’ll talk about what scientists are learning from companion parrots, including recent research examining whether parrots may use names as vocal labels, and how observations from people who live with parrots can contribute to research.

In this episode, Lara discusses a recent study published on target training 48 rats. Target training may support welfare beyond what the food reinforcer alone can.