Episode 212: Big Fun at Little Rock (with Hannah Baker, Sydney Byrd, LeeAnn Goette, and Kate Neal)

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This week's episode of the Tech Talk ORG podcast is brought to you by audible.com. Audible is your one-stop shop for all things audio entertainment. We know you like podcasts, but Audible also has thousands of audiobooks, theatrical performances, guided wellness programs, exclusive originals, and so much more. We know how busy everybody is in this field, and we know that you guys are also lifelong learners, so you probably don't get enough time to read the way you would like to. So take advantage of your husbandry time. Take advantage of your commutes to and from that zoo or that aquariumto enjoy all the different things that you can get via Audible PRODUCT. We've talked about crucial conversations. Do what Ari PERSON and I did. Use the audiobook version of that over Audible PRODUCT. It's a fantastic way to get through a fantastic resource. You guys can do that and so much more by taking advantage of a free trial via our podcast.If you go to Audibletrial.com ORG slash tech talk, that's Audibletrial.com slash T-E-C-T-A-L-K. You can enjoy a free 30-day trial of Audible PRODUCT, and you'll get a audiobook to keep once the trial is done. Enjoy everything that you have at your fingertips with Audible and support our show at the same time. That's Audibletrial.com slash tech-talk,audibletrial.com slash T-E-C-T-A-L-K. Thanks, Audible PRODUCT. dot com slash t-e-c-t-a-l-k-a-l-k thanks audible Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tech Talk podcast presented by Natural Encounters Incorporated ORG. My name is Chris PERSON. I am going to be your solo host this week because I am not in Central Florida LOC as I normally am. So Airy Bailey gets the week off and I get to introduce you to many, many cool people from the Little Rock Zoo ORG.Everybody say hello.

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Hello.

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Everybody's saying hello. We have so many different folks here who are joining us for our recording. I am towards the tail end of a 10-day consulting stint with the folks here where we've done all kinds of fun stuff, and I will probably talk about some of that in a little bit more detail. But first things first, we're going to introduce the folks who are here in the room. So we'll start next to me and we'll go around in a circle.

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Well, hi, my name is Sydney Ozzy. I'm Cindy Ozerski PERSON and I am one of the zookeepers here at the Loront Zoo ORG and I work with the Penguins and the Bastar Animals and the Bastar Animals, cool.

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Hi, I'm Kate Neal. I'm one of the carnivorekeepers here at the Loront Zoo ORG and I work with the Penguins and the Ambassadors. Cool.

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Hi, I'm Kate Neal. I'm one of the carnivorekeepers here at the zoo. I've worked here since 2008, so I think I'm the longest tenured in the group. Nice. I am Hannah Baker PERSON. I'm not the one

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from the TV show. I get that a lot. I'm the curator of ambassador animals, reptiles, farm,

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and whatever else they give me at any

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given day. Cool. And I am Leon Getty PERSON. I am the lead keeper of penguins and the ambassador team.

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Very cool. And now I officially know how to pronounce Leanne PERSON's last name, which I've been,

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I've been reading for years, and I don't think I've ever actually heard out loud before.

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So this is very cool. Well, this is cool. So I'll give a little bit of background

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on how we got here today.

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And this week is, so Little Rock Zoo ORG is an organization

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that NEI has been involved with for a number of years now.

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We were trying to remember when this first started. I think the first visit we had here was probably somewhere back in the like 2017-2018 time frame. And actually, most of the folks in this room were here from even those earlier trips. So that's pretty cool because you guys have a lot of new staff members. And it was just, you know, the consulting type stuff that we get to do when we're at zoo.So we're going around and we're watching training and we're doing presentations and we're doing talks and we're answering questions and we're getting to know people and they're showing me the best places to go get good food and good beer, which is very important part of consulting if you didn't understand that already.

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But, yeah, and then we decided to see if we could take some of the things we've built on from some of the short trips we've had in the past, which have almost always been two or three days at a time and see if we could do one big longer stretch. So what's some of the fun stuff we've been doing this week? I've gotten to work a little bit with all of you, I think, so far.So yeah, what have we been working on? Who's done something cool this week that they think has been

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fun? Well, I will. Just because Ashley PERSON's here behind us and I want to throw her under the bus, she set up a really cool setup this time for you to come work with us. And that has involved getting keepers working with animals that are not normally part of their area and then having you provide feedback and kind of watch what they're doing. It's a new experience for you and for the animal and for the keeper. So that's been a really cool setup.And it's been fun for me to watch and see what everyone can accomplish and how quickly they do it.

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Yeah, so we've worked with a number of different animals. We've worked with rats. We did some stuff with parrots. We did some stuff with ground hornbills, ravens, goats, donkeys, mini horses. Am I forgetting anything?

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No, you said goats.

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That was the important part. That's right. Rock stars. Yes, said goats. That was the important part. That's right. Rock stars. Yes, we have leaned heavily on the goat training. We've tried to do a bunch of stuff early on with some of the other animals. I think the rats have learned everything possible that they can learn with some of the folks who work with them from the early sort of training.And yeah, the general idea was to try to see if we could well define in a really short period of time, a really specific behavior that we could teach an animal to do on cue and if we could well define in a really short period of time, a really specific behavior that we could teach an animal to do on cue, and if we assume they know no other version of it to begin with, what are all the things we can do to prompt that behavior early on, and then how can we systematically fade out those prompts so that we can try to get down to a pretty small, pretty discreet queue all at once. So Sydney's one of the people who got a chance to work with our goats, right?

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Do you want to talk about what we did with the goat training? Yeah, so we started with Pogo PERSON. He's one of the Nigerian NORP gulf goats that we have down at the farm. And we started with, he's done a lot of stationing behaviors with other people, so we wanted to do something a little bit different. So we had him going around a cone, and at first he kept trying to go into the cone. He wasn't quite aware that the

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cone was there, and then he was kind of uncomfortable with that. So then we kind of worked around

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that, and he eventually caught on, and he was able to stand about five feet back, and he would go walk around the cone and come back. So that was really awesome. That was really fun. Yeah.

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And I think it was interesting because we were taking some ideas

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that we thought would make things easier for him early on. And I think we accidentally taught him to basically smear his body

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on the side of this cone and he knocked it over a couple of times.

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And I think once he figured out, oh, I don't have to do this.

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Though this actually, this actually makes this much, much fun.

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Kate PERSON, what did we do during your appointment? So I worked with one of the rats and I think the most, I think this concerning thing for me, but it's working with big cats, I'm always working in protected contact. And I think very early on you're like,you can open the door and I was like, no, I can't. I don't know how to communicate with an animal when them full contact. So I think wrapping my head around that was a little challenge for me. And also, the rats were so smart, smarter than I realized, and how long they would allow training to happen. I feel like with a lot of the cats, we get kind of short stints where you only get, you know, three, five, if you're lucky, eight to ten minutes of training out of them.And that rat trained for 50 minutes. And I was like, now what do I do? I had his attention for so long. That was really fun. But we trained him to go to two separate stations, and he got that down pretty quickly.

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And then we taught him to go into that little bag. There's like a little hammock bag that it plopped down into by the end, and it was really cute. Yeah, I need to go through and see if any of those pictures I tried to take of the bag training or purse trainer or whatever that thing I was in there was.

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It was adorable, whatever it was.

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It was adorable, absolutely.

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Leanne PERSON, we got to do goat training, right?

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One of the problems we do have lots of Nigerian NORP goats,

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and one of the issues I had seen as an ambassador keeper, the barnkeeper, the barn people's truck was getting in to remove one goat from a group. Yeah.

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So what I wanted to do with Bolt PERSON was work on him stationing away from me while I opened the door, came in, and him staying there, not rushing the gate. So that's one of the things that we worked on.

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Yeah, and that was fun because I think we got to a place where it was clear enough that, you could be in there with him, give him a queue, he would sit and station, you could completely walk out of the area, close the gate behind you, and he would stay there and sit patiently until you could go back in and reward him again, which was cool for me because I got video of it and then I got to put it in the talk that I did the other day for staff and that always makes me happy. So it's one of those things that I think because that area where we were training the

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goats is a public area, it's a place where guests are coming all day long.

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Then in the middle of these sessions or sometimes towards the beginning or towards the end,

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we would just have these groups of people just show up and sometimes they would talk to us, sometimes they wouldn't talk to us and I think very consistently people were kind of a little bit mind-blown that you guys were asking these animals to do things and then they could see them choose to do it very readily. You weren't shoving them around. You weren't pushing them. It was all very hands-off, all very voluntary. And I think that that was a cool thing for people to be able to see. And one of the great parts is your staff is that you guys, if there were other people aroundwatching that as we were sitting in doing our training, usually somebody else will kind of peel off for a second and give the guests a little bit of context and explain what it is we're seeing so that maybe it's not just tricks we're teaching them to do because it's fun and funny, but actually this is something that's going to help contribute to their care and to us being nice and healthy and safe. It was really, really cool.One of the things you guys wouldn't have gotten a chance to see was today. We did back-to-back sessions with both of the boar goats. And if you haven't seen what a boar goat is, it's a goat that's bigger than you for most of the people listening. Really, really large species of goat. And some individuals that I've seen in the past, how do we say this politely? Maybe interacting with humans and with the barriers of their seen in the past, how do we say this politely, maybe interacting withhumans and with the barriers of their enclosure in a way that is maybe not as nice as we would like and definitely maybe not as safe as we would like because they're big and they're strong. But what was super cool in those two sessions was we had two separate trainers able to teach each of those animals individually to go from their inside stall, outside the open door, go station on something out there, two different things for each of the two goats.We then enter the area. We close the gate behind us. We go outside of the barn. We close that gate behind us, and then we reward them for that. So the idea being that down the line, how cool would it be?

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We could give both animals one cue, both of them choose to shift outside so that somebody can come and close all the doors. And now we're not doing the wrestling thing that we sometimes do with the animals. And like Kate PERSON said, I think one of the reasons it's good to do that is to remember that sometimes just because we can do something with an animal doesn't mean that there isn't other ways that we can do it. Because if your cats aren't shifting, you're probably not going to go in there and push their butts and uhdefinitely you like all your fingers and uh your blood to stay inside your body probably so so it's been really cool we've had a great opportunity to do that so that's what we've been kind of focused on this week and we did a talk yesterday about thinking about details of training and setting up antecedents and setting up consequences steve is here for the first two days of the trip, so he got to give a talk on training and then see some of the training that was going on here as well. So that's what we're kind of focused on here. But what are some of the other broad things going on at the zookind of stuff? Is there anything you guys have going on here that's been cool or fun or anything you'd want to chat about or share with the folks who might be listening to this episode?

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Do you mean training? It could anything anything i've been dying for someone to give me a platform for drink beer save turtle um if you work at the zoo this is all i've talked about

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for the last two weeks okay can i talk about that let's talk about awesome um none of you guys can go

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unless you live in arkansas um partner with Turtle Survival Alliance ORG.

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A lot of people are going to be familiar with that organization.

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One of my good friends works there. And we partnered with them in a local brewery, Flyway Brewing ORG. They're awesome.

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So I think it's next week. The 15th and the 18th of this month, we have two opportunities for people to come out, and a dollar per beer goes to turtle conservation. So that's super cool.

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Oh, I love that.

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Yeah. And then we've got dragons. It's like the dragon kingdom.

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Okay, so what's dragon kingdom?

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We have like this giant dragon exhibit that we've never had before with these animatronic dragons.

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And it's a really fun time.

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Our maiden staff has awesome actually built this giant, like it looks like almost like a castle that you walk in and that's like the opening to dragon kingdom that's pretty cool that's cool that's cool how long is that here at the zoo?

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I think it's until September so we've had it since spring break which is back in March and we're having it all the way until September and then we'll have little while again if you have every year which is we partner with Tiongu ORG and have these really awesome lanterns around the zoo.

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Oh, that's cool. That's exciting. We also, speaking of cool and speaking of exciting,

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so we mentioned before that some of the folks in the room here are part of the sort of the

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ambassador team of animals that work here at the zoo and your team got a little bit bigger

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this week because you guys got some cool new stuff.

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Can we talk about that or is that a surprise?

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Yes, Leanne PERSON.

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Okay.

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We have the opportunity to get two male pouched rats

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to join our collection.

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And we're really excited to get them into our ambassador program.

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I don't know if you guys know what a pouturet is,

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but they are giant rats. So we have, and they detect landmines, tuberculosis. They're found in Africa LOC. So they have really cool messaging. So we're hoping to be able to train some of those behaviors to show how they find landmines. We're hoping to be able to train them to kind of show how they sample things and do everything like that.So we're pretty excited that they've been here a day. A day.

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Today we're going to start with just, hey, I have food.

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That's cool.

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Are they in quarantine for a little while?

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They are.

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I was a little nervous because of all animals, we work free contact with.

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Rodents make me the most nerve, besides parrots, I guess. Rodents make me nervous. They have really big teeth. So I was a little concerned about what these guys were going to be like. But so far, they seem super confident, not afraid of anybody, and pretty friendly. So the world is our oyster.

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The world is your oyster.

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So what are some preliminary behaviors? I'm now tying what we're talking about now into some of the stuff I talked about yesterday. What are some of the preliminary training behaviors you guys are probably going to think about teaching those guys?

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I think a big one to start with is going to be a station, something where they know where they need to be when we open a door. Because of their size, I mean, I can't have said how large these rats are.

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And when we're talking about weight, they're 8 to 10 pounds.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, and they're bigger than, way bigger than your boot.

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In the picture I took, I keep showing people, look at your foot, and they're way bigger than that.

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I wear a size 9.

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So I think we do have to understand

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that they are giant rodents, aren't that. So having that station behavior, so they know where they're supposed to be when we're working with them, probably looking at the targets, we're able to move them back and forth,and crate training. They're not an animal that's probably gonna wanna be in our hands a lot. So being able to shift them to know where they're supposed to be, probably where we're gonna start.

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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's exciting stuff. And I know one of my goals before I leave is I would love to go peek at those guys just because, well, at the very least, I got a chance to see the photo,

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which is great because I will get to meet the Pouserats, which is, and we have decided on names for

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these two. Yes, Rambo and Boom PERSON. Rambo and Boom, yeah.

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Our two rats who are joining the collection.

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That's super cool.

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So they're going to get to have a job.

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Kate PERSON, you have had a new addition to the kitty family since I was last here.

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You want to talk about some of the stuff going on with the big carnivores at the zoo?

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Yeah, since the last time you were here, we've had a couple new animals come in.

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We have a new jaguar LeBron PERSON, who's actually recommended to breed with our female.

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They've been together and bred some, but unsuccessfully,

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she's got kind of a questionable background as far as reproduction goes,

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or cautiously optimistic.

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The challenges he's been throwing at us is not really wanting to come in and shift,

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so that's one something we talked about was how to motivate him in some different ways.

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And actually, we took some of your advice by limiting some of the indoor space and making it a little bit more novel last night.

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And he shifted in beautifully this morning.

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So hopefully we're starting a new pattern with him that'll benefit us a lot.

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And a small cat, well, not so cat like the ringtail cat,

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who's not actually a cat, a proaunted from here in the United States GPE,

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is also a part of our collection in carnivores.

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And we have a new one that just arrived about a month ago, and he cleared quarantine.

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And just last week, I started training him for his nest box behavior,

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and he's already bouncing right in, and we're starting to work on duration already.

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And it's only been a week, so making a lot of progress there and he is adorable.

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Adorable. I know you sent me a video earlier today and I still haven't gotten to see it yet.

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So how did you start that training?

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Initially just the like Leanne said start with I have food. He's less than a year old so

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he's been a little bit skittish with the first few weeks of through quarantine was just, I'm not scary. I have food. And once he realized the protein items are really high value for him, once he realized upon approach he would get them, he started coming up pretty quickly. So luckily that food motivation helped. And then just adjusting to his indoor and outdoor holding. And it only took him a few days to realize that the nest box meant some good stuff. We started leaving food, his regular diet in there,and then he was bouncing in there with us physically in the room.

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And we started pairing that with the treats inside

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and put it on a cue.

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Nice, I love that. So encouraging most of the behavior you want to see and thinking about the queuing later. That's one of the things we've gotten to work on

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is figuring out what are the signals that we want these animals to understand is connected to the different behaviors that are here. I think one of the nice things about something like station training or something like crate training is because a lot of times just bringing those objects into the area sort of become the queue. So I always think it's kind of funny when I see somebody bring, you know, they've got likea little wooden disc that they're going to have a porcupine climb on or something and the porcupine's just sitting there doing whatever it wants to do and somebody puts this big new thing in the area and the guy already is walking over to it and then the person sits there points and says station and you're like I think you could probably do nothing and he kind of knows what it's such a clear salient cue but if it was something that was in the environment all the time if the crate was in there all the time then we got to think of some kind of prompter queuethat's going to ask them to go into those things, which has been super fun. And one of the other things that I wanted to ask Kate PERSON about, which I don't know if we ever talked about this before, but one of the coolest things I got to see really, really early on in working with the zoo was some of the trainingthat you were doing with the big cats. So the way that the setup works here at this zoo is that the sort of holding areas for most,

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if not all of the big cats, kind of all back into the same area, is that right? Or is lion separate from that? Or are the holding areas all in that one back?

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Yeah.

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So they all back up together.

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So if everybody's inside, you stand in one place, look around you and there's jaguars and there's tigers and there's lions and it's amazing. So one of the early things I remember seeing was when you were giving me a tour of the area and just showing me a lot of those animals were in, and I was asking, well, what kind of training stuff have you done with them? Because that's what I'msupposed to talk about. And you said, well, we've done a lot of sort of injection training type stuff, and they're pretty good for that. And what's that look like? Well, I'll show you. And Kate PERSON proceeded to go around to like every single cat that was shifted inside,

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asked them to line up, and then basically run them through an entire injection where they would line up, she would pinch their skin back at their hip real, real hard, and be able to either poke them with something or just for duration. And these kind of went around and just did it with everybody. So because I don't know if I had the opportunity, and for folks who've seen the video I took of that, who I've shown to many, many people, I'll ask the same question that most of them ask me,how the hell did you do that? Slow and steady. There's a lot of patience, and I think a lot of trust with the animals. So building that trust from the very beginning and teaching that common language with the animal of really having a strong tie with the bridge was important.

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And then like we've talked about, Aniseedon's changing around the environment to get the animals to give us that initial capture that gave us a start to where we wanted to go.

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So we use those benches inside the holding that we're actually able to move around. We create a little L shape with that and guide the animals with the target into that space and then capturing the tap towards the mesh with their hip.

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And then we gradually will move the bench backward and out of it and make sure we're staying with the pressure being placed on the mesh. And that's the criteria we use to move forward and then building duration from there and tolerating needles. But I think having a lot of trust in us made a huge difference.And then when we transitioned into doing blood draws, having keeper staff on the back end and learning to do the blood draws went a lot faster. I think we talked about that the last time you were here of having us actually be the ones with the needles on blood draw and the sedation medications made a big difference. Yeah, it's the coolest thing ever. And you guys are also, I remember seeing that within the limitations of the setup that you have because almost nobody has the benefit of a training area that's built to the exactspecifications of ideally what you'd want. We're working with what we have, right? We make modifications where we can and where it's practical and sometimes we can't. But you even have them for stuff like the blood draw, the tail type stuff is they're actually backing up and presenting the tails themselves. You guys aren't fishing their tails out and, you know, like you see a lot of people do.So it's great.

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Which is not the wrong with that, but you guys are doing it at a pretty high level yeah we're really like our setup every holding area has a howdy door in between in addition to a solid door so we're able to put a trainer on the howdy door at the animals front and then have them come perpendicular to the front mesh where most people would normally fish the tail out.

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So we can have the animals actually push their tail out and into our hands as criteria and then do the blood draw from there. So they're actively offering us their tail as opposed to actually pulling it out. Yeah, that was very, very cool. Well done with that.

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And yeah, if you ever run into to Kate PERSON or to me and anywhere in a professional setting, ask about the big cat stuff and I'd love to show you that video because it's really, really cool. They do really, really good stuff. Well, you said something that

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made me think of a question I wanted to ask you guys because you've, you guys have all been at the

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zoo for a little while and you've, some of you've been around to different areas. And you mentioned building trust as being an important part of that. And I think one of the things we talked about a lot this week we're talking about in the individual sessions. We talked about it in the talk. And it's something we've talked about on this show a lot is the importance of trust and of building trust and being careful to not violate trust. But one of the things that I think can be hard for people to see sometimes is what does that actually look like?Because trust is a label. Trust is not a thing I can hold and I can feel and I can measure. But we can describe certain sets of behaviors and we can give them the label trust. And when we talk about with trust, we usually talk about in terms of the reasonable expectation that an interaction with you will result in something that is good for me. So if I have a high expectation there that this is probably going to go well if I choose to interact with this human, then that's what we might call a high degree of trust.So what I wanted to task you guys with, and you can either go around or you can just think about if anybody has an idea, you can offer it up, what is something that you know, you or somebody else here at the zoo has done successfully to either build trust

Speaker 01467.02s - 1477.92s

with one of the animals you guys work with or avoid removing trust from an animal that you've worked with. Does that inspire anybody? Hannah PERSON's nodding her head, so she wants to talk about.

Speaker 21478.38s - 1483.72s

Not that I wanted to jump in first if you all thought of anything. But I love to talk about

Speaker 01483.72s - 1492.84s

Griffin PERSON our bald eagle, the one that you saw me work with this morning. We have a long ways to go with him, but he was a rehab bird that came in as a young adult.

Speaker 21495.22s - 1519.72s

And when we have him out in the public, or just at all around anybody, including coworkers, I don't think a lot of people realize how much work went into, this is a free lofted eagle. He's loose in his enclosure. We've had to train him to not only tolerate us coming into his enclosure, but putting in his jesses and then stepping up on our glove.And to me, that took so much time to build that amount of trust that people don't get to see when we just have him out on glove

Speaker 01519.72s - 1523.72s

that I know took a lot of work. So how did you build that trust with him?

Speaker 21524.76s - 1540.66s

Reading and reacting to his body language and moving super slowly. So when he first got here, we don't go in with that bird unless we have something to offer him, usually, especially at the beginning. If he was nervous, we gave him a place to escape to. I don't know if you remember that little box he has.

Speaker 01541.04s - 1545.56s

So at any time, if we come in, he does not have to be around us. He can leave.

Speaker 21553.4s - 1586.52s

I think that helped him a lot. He does, he's missing an eye, which is not an ideal candidate for an ambassador situation, which I realize. We've had to work around that a lot, too, because I do think that affects his confidence sometimes. And actually, it affects just delivering the treats successfully that he can see or the reinforcement. And then, it affects just delivering the treats successfully that he can see or the reinforcement. And then, yeah, it gradually built. We have a station that he comes and jumps up onto, and that's kind of his signal to us that he's willing to participate in training. We don't chase him down in his enclosure ever to get him to train. So yeah, little things likethat, I think over time built up to where he knew he had an opportunity to get food if he would come work with us. Gotcha.

Speaker 01586.7s - 1592.46s

So I love that it's a combination of both. Why is it worth it for me to come interact with you? What am I going to get?

Speaker 21592.56s - 1607.4s

We often talk about. I haven't talked about this a lot, but one of the ways we used to talk about training a lot in the company was we try in these interactions to sort of ask from the animal's perspective, what's in it for me? Like when we're asking an animal to do something like, what do I get or what do I get away

Speaker 11607.4s - 1611.6s

from that I would want to do this thing that you humans have as a goal?

Speaker 01611.7s - 1679.34s

That's nice that you have a goal, but like, why would I want to interact with you? So thinking about what you can encourage, and I think one of the important things you just mentioned there too were escape opportunities because quite often when we're working with animals. And we even thought about this. And Leanne was there when we did our very first, I think, training session of this visitwhere we were going to work with the parrots with Steve and with Braden PERSON, one of the trainers who was here at the beginning of the week, to try to do a spin behavior, something we've trained parrots to do hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times at NEI ORG. But I remember Steve making an observation at one point in that training that we wanted to actually adjust where we were standing because we were seeing body language in the bird that suggested the bird was not super comfortable.The bird was kind of nervous of the people there. And Steve PERSON made the observation that the way we had things set up is we were kind of right in the middle of the room with the bird perched towards a wall. And so if that bird wanted to try to go somewhere, his real only option was to try to go towards a wall that was right behind him, where we shifted the humans to the other side of the perchso that we were pressed up against the wall. And the bird now had access to the entire room,

Speaker 11679.44s - 1697.18s

if they wanted to try to get away from us, that we saw that body language calm down. So it's a good thing to think about if you ever see a lot of nervousness in animals, is can you give them more opportunities to get away from us that we saw that body language calm down. So it's a good thing to think about if you ever see a lot of nervousness in animals is can you give them more opportunities to get away from you? And what we tend to see is that when an animal has more opportunities to get away from you, they tend to actually try to get away from you less. So that's pretty cool.

Speaker 01697.32s - 1706.92s

So great observation. Anybody else? Any thoughts about anything you've done? Or anything when you're training new people to work with your animals, you try to encourage them to avoid doing.

Speaker 41707.72s - 1731.28s

It wasn't actually me with my coworkers, Andrea PERSON. We just had our West Niles and physicals for all of our parrots, and she has voluntarily trained them to have the towel go over them. She's worked with Rico PERSON, our military would call really well, but she started late with him. But we were able to towel him get him in hand do a full vetprocedure the next day he'd come back and he did the exact same behavior so she had worked so hard

Speaker 51731.28s - 1740.4s

to make sure that trust was there that even though that's been you know 24 hours before he had a full medical procedure he went right back to that same behavior and she kept that trust with him which was

Speaker 01740.4s - 1819.38s

really cool that was nice yeah I think in that especially when we're training towards things that have sort of a medical husbandry especially restra restraints type involved thing there, is that we know that what we're trying to do is we're trying to create such positive history involving all these different objects that we're interacting with is that, yes, at some point we're going to get to a point where some of this stuff is going to be a little less voluntary or there will be maybe an uncomfortable sensation, like a needle or something like that that's involved. But that is not what happens every single time you interact in this situation, right? 99 times out of 100, it's just that, you know, I'm going to interact with this towel and maybe they're going to pick me up, maybe they're not, and then they let me go and then we're done. And it's just maybe that one time.And I think that that's when you ask that question of like, well, how bad was that for the animal? I think you bring up a really good point. It's like, well, how would we know that? Because they can't look at you and say, hey, I hated that. I wish you hadn't done that to me. But they sort of do with their body language.And if you ask them to do that behavior again, that's a good indicator of whether or not you bankrupted that trust, as we would say. So if that animal chooses very shortly afterwards to re-engage with that same thing in the same situation, maybe with the same level of motivation, maybe with a little bit of hesitancy, which we never blame them for, then really good.I like that. Good call. Anything else you guys can think of?

Speaker 11819.38s - 1857.44s

I have one. When we're training new staff, I think it's important to culturally teach people to take the opportunities to have a positive interaction when it presents itself. Like the whatever you're doing cleaning or an animal comes in and acts like they're interested and we say wants to play ball. Take that opportunity to build that history with them and don't think that whatever you're doing over here, the cleaning, the rinsing, the dishes can wait a few minutes if the animal's giving you an opportunityto have a positive interaction with them. So building more and more history that way every time it's an option for you.

Speaker 01858.14s - 1905.06s

Yeah, that's an interesting point is, you know, we, most of us know, I think that any interaction we have with an animal, we could call training because, you know, it's influencing their behavior in some way, whether we want to or not. And there's likely a lot of body language that our animals may be showing us that we would call a desire for some kind of affiliative interaction. Like, I am interested in you. And then because of all of the other needs of our job, we just miss out on that.And that's, you know, not bad on us for not noticing because we're focused on other things. But the same way that we want people to be really, really sensitive to, hey, are you doing something in the environment that might be making the animal uncomfortable? And you're missing that because you're focused on something else. It's a really good point to maybe think about that too. If you see body language

Speaker 11905.06s - 1945.18s

in them that's like, hey, what are you doing over there? Or at least that's how I would interpret it my mind. Is that an opportunity to engage with them? And then all that stuff kind of leads into more trust building, stronger relationship. I mean, the way we kind of think about it is there's, it's really hard to say, when done well, there really is no negative fallout of positive reinforcement. So if you see that they're doing a behavior that you want to see more of, then you do something that encourages them to do more of it again, then that's probably only going to result in a good thing for them.It's interesting because then I think about two, how many times have we, probably all of us without even realizing it, been in a situation where an animal has been doing

Speaker 01945.18s - 1958.48s

something like that and we've accidentally punished it in some way. So maybe they're curious about what's happening and then you drag a bucket across the floor and it makes a horrible loud noise or something. So wow, now I'm going to be super paranoid about everything I do of all the

Speaker 11958.48s - 1962.84s

animals around me all the time. But I like that. That's a really, really good point. Cool.

Speaker 01962.94s - 1973.6s

Any other thoughts about trust building? Or things you've seen remove trust that we've learned from. I'm trying to think, too. So many different things.

Speaker 21973.64s - 2003.04s

I was going to say I can force myself to think of something. I mean, I think a lot about how animals travel in crates when you're talking about removing trust. And I know this is, I think this is something a lot of us have talked about at our zoo is yeah if you're crate training something it needs to be a very positive experience to be in the crate so we try to be super cognizant of what's happening when they're in there that they're not swinging around they're not bumping into anything I think that's a really easy behavior to break down if you're not paying a lot of attention to their experience yeah that's

Speaker 02003.04s - 2133s

really really cool I'm One of the things I remember seeing, you know, recently AZA ORG kind of updated their definitions of what Ambassador Animals are, and actually that's kind of the new update. If you haven't looked into any of this, I think we've talked about it a little bit on the show, but long story short, is it's basically thinking more in terms of an Ambassador Animal is not something than an animal is. It's something that an animal does. So if an animal acts in any kind of ambassador role,they can now earn the title of ambassador animals. So we have ambassador elephants now, and we have ambassador hyena. If they are being trained to interact with the public in some kind of an interactive program, then, hey, they're ambassadors in that moment,and there are different things we should think about. And I remember when they laid out all these new guidelines of revisions that they had done for the first time in like a decade to some of their guidelines, I remember the one word that I saw a lot of people get stuck on was concern about excessive vibration. And I think that came from people who are traveling ambassador animals. And if at some point you have to put them on a cart or if to transport them from one place to another or if you're puttingthem into a vehicle then what is that experience like for those animals that are in that traveling situation and i'm seeing all these notes go back about who's using big soft rubber tires on their things versus oh my god i have these hard metal ones and they're just bouncing all over the place and i think it was it was kind of nice because it seemed like a little bit of an overreaction to me but at least it got people thinking about that and And I think that it is easy sometimes to assume that if an animal is taught to go into a crate without hesitation, that that somehow means they're okay with everything else thathappens after they're crating. Like we say for program animals, hey, if we've taught them all to go into a crate voluntarily, that if they go into the crate, that's an indication for us that they're ready to go out on program. It might be, it might not be, I think, for a lot of the animals, the distance between when the crating behavior happened and whatever happens on the program is so far apartthat maybe they're making that connection, maybe they're not, but I think you bring up a really good point. I think it's the experience of what happens while you're in the crate that is likely to punish or reinforce that behavior. Crate sensitivity. That's like a thing we could do like a whole podcast about at some point.

Speaker 12133s - 2173.8s

So we actually had back in, was it February? We had a wellness week here at the zoo, and we gave some staff an opportunity to learn some things and especially reaching out to like non-animal staff because it's hard to understand what exactly is going on like if you were talking about vibrations so one of the activities that the welfare committee ORG set up was we had multiple different crates and we had staff come down and actually lift them and move them and had things likewhere the balance meters and got people inside

Speaker 52173.8s - 2176.36s

like our large carnivore crates that are made of aluminum

Speaker 42176.36s - 2177.34s

that make a lot of noise.

Speaker 52177.34s - 2179.08s

We had people get in there and tap the side

Speaker 12179.08s - 2182.84s

so they could better appreciate what the animals actually experience

Speaker 52182.84s - 2189.6s

because it's really easy from the outside of the crate to discredit what the animals are experiencing. I thought a lot of people got

Speaker 42190.56s - 2196.24s

good insights into that. It gave everybody a better understanding and a way to put themselves in

Speaker 52196.24s - 2201.68s

the animal's shoes per se. Yeah, we had a couple of our staff have been talking about this for a while

Speaker 12201.68s - 2208.54s

and I think somebody finally actually did it of, you know, could we teach people to interact with crates the way we want to by getting some of

Speaker 02208.54s - 2216.96s

these crates, if they're crates that are a good size for one person to be able to move on their own, can we start putting full glasses of water inside the crates and then have them move them from

Speaker 22216.96s - 2220.24s

one place to another and then see what happens. And it's like one of those things that just like

Speaker 02220.24s - 2224.86s

how stressful. What it made me think of, yeah, because then I'm thinking of like people, you know,

Speaker 22224.92s - 2228.46s

racing with an egg and a spoon or something and like that tension that happens but

Speaker 02228.46s - 2235.48s

well and I think I think what's good about it is it is you know what what makes that you say like

Speaker 52235.48s - 2239.36s

you said that's stressful there's tension in that and I think it's you know what we try to relieve

Speaker 12239.36s - 2296.82s

ourselves of is to say like well then just take your time take your time and be sensitive and you'll be fine but I think the reality is when we're actually working with things like animals and crates, there usually is a little bit of tension and there usually is a little bit of, um, there's a little bit of pressure for something to happen, right? We have a program that starts at 1 p.m. We got here five minutes later than we should have. So now as a result, we are maybe rushing a little bit more than we should have. So I'm really glad you guys got a chance to do that. That's cool.And then, you know, there's limits to how much we can say that what I experienced in a crate matches what a box turtle experiences in a crate. But I think it's better than not trying to have any kind of empathy for that at all. And I think it definitely at least highlights for people the importance of being sensitive around animals, which is super, super cool. This is super fun.There's so many different things we could talk about, and I know we could talk about all this different stuff for all day long, but we do have to eventually wrap this up because all of us have more training to do. We have other things to do today. We have pouch rats that need our time and we need our attention.

Speaker 52297.36s - 2324.18s

So one of the things I realized as I went and grabbed dinner last night, and while I was out, there was like this little Arkansas magazine thing. I was like, I'll pick that up and look at it later. And there was this little article inside about the zoo. And it was a note that I saw that said something about the zoo celebrating 100 years.And I was like, wait, why has nobody ever said anything to me about that? That seems like kind of a big deal. And then I saw the quote from Susan PERSON, the zoo director in it saying, yeah, we thought it was 1926,

Speaker 12324.18s - 2334.96s

but actually we found some documentation that said, no, it's actually 1924. So we're just going to kind of celebrate that entire time period of, so you guys have been here for 100 years. So congratulations. That's pretty

Speaker 52334.96s - 2341.14s

awesome. Y'all haven't been here for 100 years, but hopefully you will not have to work here for

Speaker 02341.14s - 2349.88s

100 years. But I think a lot of weird things would have to change for you to be a 100-year employee of the zoo. So a lot has changed in that time, and a lot will

Speaker 52349.88s - 2363.72s

continue to change, but as kind of one of our parting thoughts, can you guys think about, and we'll just go around the room, and you guys can tell me what you're thinking about, what's a thing that you look forward to happening at the zoo, taking on personally as a challenge

Speaker 02363.72s - 2372.04s

or do you think would be a cool thing for you guys to do into the future. And we're going to start with Sidney PERSON.

Speaker 32372.04s - 2377.78s

No, unless somebody else wants to talk first and we can come back to you. I think about that. I think about it.

Speaker 42379.6s - 2381.16s

If anybody else has a thought, you can jump in first.

Speaker 32381.16s - 2382.12s

Leanne's going to go in first.

Speaker 42382.12s - 2382.84s

Okay, okay.

Speaker 02382.84s - 2385.82s

Hopefully this year we are getting a new mew for our birds of prey,

Speaker 42385.9s - 2402.4s

which is very exciting, but it's going to be a completely new setup. So it's really going to challenge us as trainers to work differently with our birds. And I'm pretty excited about that different setup and have them having more choice to leave our presence or work with us. So I'm pretty excited about our new new.

Speaker 02402.78s - 2404.9s

Cool, new bird of prey housing. That's exciting.

Speaker 22410.4s - 2416.08s

That's a big one. You thought of something. to city well so i originally was in the farm for about two three years so now i'm over in the penguin ambassador animal area so i think for me

Speaker 42416.08s - 2421.68s

i'm just excited to work with new animals and be able to build relationships with them and just see like

Speaker 22421.68s - 2426.38s

how i can help improve their welfare and just see how things go.

Speaker 42427.12s - 2427.78s

Cool.

Speaker 32427.94s - 2429.04s

I like it.

Speaker 42429.54s - 2436.38s

I think just in my time here, I've seen a large change in our zoo in regards to how we look at

Speaker 22436.38s - 2443.76s

conservation organizations and being participating at a higher level and actually going and learning

Speaker 42443.76s - 2444.9s

out in the field.

Speaker 02444.9s - 2449s

And one of our partnerships is with Wildlife SOS ORG.

Speaker 32449s - 2451.32s

And we've sent multiple carnivore staff.

Speaker 02451.32s - 2456.76s

We've sent vet staff, not just wildlife SOS, but that's why I know the most about,

Speaker 12456.76s - 2461.94s

to actually go work with the bears that are over there, specifically in Agra GPE, to help the

Speaker 02461.94s - 2478.44s

trainers there learn some of the techniques that we use with our sloth bears so that they can be giving those animals the quality training and the best welfare possible and working with the bear SSP to bring staff over there.

Speaker 12478.44s - 2483.92s

I think it's a really exciting move forward that I hope we continue to see that trend.

Speaker 02484.42s - 2485.74s

That's awesome. I love that.

Speaker 22486.28s - 2509.28s

I'm going to say in the very near future, because this is something I'm excited about, and this is a plea for help, because we have Komodo dragons coming to our zoo this fall, which is the first time we've ever had the species. I'm being tasked. I'm the curator of the area. I've definitely never worked with Komodo Dragons.Some of our reptiles have half, so that's, thank God.

Speaker 02509.76s - 2543.26s

But if there's anyone out there that's worked with Komodo Dragons that would love to chat about, I don't know, kind of where I need to start, what I need to do, things I need to work on training immediately. I have some kind of idea or just really good ideas on how to manage them. Find me.Find me. Find me. How would somebody find you? Facebook ORG. Can I give my Instagram ORG or anything? I would love to. If you're helping with Komoda Dragons ORG.Hannah B.000 on Instagram ORG is my name. There we go. Don't message me, please. I'll take it. That's where all good zoo information sharing happens.

Speaker 22543.26s - 2546s

And if it's linked, I'll give you my email address on history.

Speaker 02546s - 2550s

Hey, anything that's not Zoo Creepers is better as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 22550s - 2595.36s

So very, very cool. Okay, well thank you very much, guys, for joining. If you want to reach out to Hannah PERSON, you know how to do that now. If you want to reach out to us to give us any feedback about this episode, or if you have any questions for any of the staff of Little Rock Zoo ORG, we can let them know when you let us know by emailingus at podcast at natural encounters.com, where you can always reach out to us. Well, we will likely have Airy, the co-host, back for the next episode of the show. We will wrap up for this week. And before we do that, all four of our guests are going to help me with one more thing. And this is my favorite thing I get to do every episode because you're all going to get real freaked out, but I'm not going to give you any time to think about it. And you're going to help us send the episode off.And the way that we do that is we always wrap the episodes up in the same way. We say, stay safe, stay healthy.

Speaker 02596.26s - 2602.86s

Our guest thinks of something else that they think people should think about. And then we say behavior is what we do. And that's kind of the tagline for we have it.

Speaker 22602.96s - 2605.24s

So people have said stuff like,

Speaker 02608.5s - 2608.68s

stay happy, whatever. You can add anything you want to. I thought you're going to ask us to sing.

Speaker 22614.94s - 2619.32s

No, no, I'm going to go to each of you individual. Stay safe, stay healthy. The way it originally started was we used to say stay safe, stay healthy. Don't forget to wash your hands because it started

Speaker 02619.32s - 2622.92s

during the pandemic. We got sick of saying that because we like to assume everybody's washing their

Speaker 12622.92s - 2641.98s

hands now. So we say stay safe, stay healthy. We make the guests think of the third thing, and then we add to that too. But we're going to have four additions, and I am literally going to point out to you who is going to help us answer this. So on behalf of all five of us who have been a part of this episode and Ashley PERSON, who's been creeping in the background.

Speaker 22642.18s - 2645.08s

Shout out Ashley PERSON. Stay safe, stay healthy. out Ashley PERSON. Stay safe.

Speaker 02645.44s - 2646.4s

Stay healthy.

Speaker 42646.96s - 2651s

Stay curious. Stay awesome. Keep training. Stay excited.

Speaker 02651.44s - 2653.46s

And remember, behavior is what we do.

Speaker 42653.62s - 2654.82s

Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye.

Speaker 12654.82s - 2667.74s

Bye. Titleing these has to be the most fun part in the podcast.

Speaker 52668.36s - 2668.86s

Oh, it is.

Speaker 42668.98s - 2671.1s

Yeah, and I always give it like a silly, stupid title,

Speaker 52671.18s - s

which is probably one of the reasons more people don't listen to the show. You know,