</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
pachyderm said:
> Zoos and marine parks love people with a behavioral psych background because of the emphasis on behavior modification, operant conditioning...

Uk. Animals are people too. Do you think they want to be conditioned and operanted? They might think "What is this *&%$#* human after?"

> fit in socially...

Do you WANT to "fit in"?

> people might think there is something wrong with me because it took me this long to get there...

They might. Some might find you more interesting...

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

I came here to talk about my life change, not argue animal behavior. But just so you know what I mean by "conditioning" and "behavior modification" (I wont discuss "operanted" because that isn't a word and I'm not sure what you mean by it) I'm talking about making these animals more comfortable and happier. I worked with a parrot with severe arthritis in her feet. Catching her up, toweling her, subduing her just to trim her nails was cruel. So I used operant conditioning to teach her to allow me to trim her nails voluntarily. I'd ask her to give me her foot and she would and I'd trim those nails and praise her and be gentle with her and give her all kinds of treats and scratches and tell her she was a good girl. A monkey a friend of mine worked with had a congenital blood disorder that required monthly venipuncture and blood panelling. She taught him to give her his arm so she could take his blood and then he got all kinds of reinforcement. You condition your children every day! Good grades are reinforcement for behaving properly and doing their work in school. Its all about making people and animals comfortable in their surroundings and lowering stress. If we are going to keep those animals in captivity (which is a whole different debate and really doesn't belong in this forum) we need to make sure their lives with us are rich and low stress! It is amazing how previously abused, neurotic animals get better with behavioral enrichment, positive reinforcement operant conditioning, and behavior modification practices. I'm not talking jumping through hoops of fire!!!