Elephants Elephants - Wildpro - Twycross Zoo

92
becomes a familiar and reinforcing object to the elephant and soon holds the
power to offer reassurance when new training situations arise and the
elephant is unsure of what is expected. Once the elephant is conditioned to
touch the target with its trunk, this behaviour can be shaped so that the
elephant is allowing the target to touch various parts of its body. From this
behaviour the elephant can be directed from one place to another by asking it
to move toward and touch the target. This is the essence of the shaping
process, taking a very small step in the right direction and shifting it, one
small step at a time, toward the ultimate goal. Once the handler has
established the target, the elephant can be taught to hold its head on the target
and with the use of secondary targets, the elephant will move different parts
of its body to the secondary target to accommodate the trainer (Fig 11 a,b).
Thus, an elephant can be moved for bathing, foot care, present its ear for
blood draw, all by the use of targets.
The handler has contact with the elephant only when physically shielded by
an elephant-proof barrier, which is designed for the handler’s protection.
Shielding or barriers should be such that the elephant cannot reach out
through it and contact the handler, except in very specific and limited
locations utilized for the animal to extend a foot, ear, or trunk at the handler’s
request.
For protected contact training, the elephant should be healthy and eating well.
Elephants are different from many animals in that they always seem to be
ready to eat. The elephant’s interest in the food (or lack of it), and in doing
what is necessary to obtain the food, will tell the handler if too much food, or
too little, is being offered on a daily basis.
Elephants who are sick or injured can be especially difficult to manage in a
protected contact system as their drive for food and attention is greatly
diminished. Although recent data suggests that elephants well trained in
protected contact prior to becoming ill, will often maintain their established
behaviours. Often though, elephants should be confined in a restraint device
until it recovers or the injuries heal. For this reason, all protected contact
programmes should have a restraint chute.
It has been shown that all elephants will respond to this sort of training, even
very difficult bulls (Maddox 1992). San Diego staff have considerable
experience in using both free and protected forms of training and have
developed a methodology to enable a transition to be made between the two
systems (Priest 1992). It is important the elephants can discriminate between
the two systems and different staff should be used. Priest gives an example of
a cow that appeared to prefer the protected contact system and states that,
although free to choose, animals almost never choose to terminate a training
set. Other zoos have also had positive experiences in moving between one
system to another (Kinzley 1994) (Schanbeger 1994).
To summarise the main differences between training methods used in free
(FC) and protected (PC) contact:
• In FC keeper operates as a herd member; in PC they do not.