Go Wild: Training Sea Lions

Do you have a dog at home? Or hamster? Cat? Or maybe a parakeet? Some of the pets that we live with are highly trainable and some just do their own thing. But at the zoo there's one group of party animals that love to be trained for the spotlight. Sea lions. Thank you Abby. My name is Shannon McKenney and I'm here at Blank Park Zoo in our hub harbor with Zoe and Addy, our two beautiful sea lions. We are joining a training demonstration right now. As you can see Zoe and Addy are working with their trainers behind me on a variety of different behaviors. Here at Blank Park Zoo we use something called operant conditioning or positive reinforcement training, also known as clicker training. You may even hear the clickers behind me. The clicker is what's known as a bridge and what it means is that the behavior we've just asked the animal did beautifully. They hear that click to know it's exactly what we wanted and then they get a delicious yummy treat. In this case it's fish which is their favorite. A lot of the behaviors that we do with the sea lions are to help with their health care or husbandry training. So things like drawing blood, ultrasounds and x-rays and even just a checkup. So lifting their flippers or opening the mouth just like you would do if you went to the doctor or the dentist. We also do a lot of fun behaviors that show off their athleticism. Sea lions are amazing athletes. They have high speed and great jumps. Zoe and Addy are eight and nine years old and they came to us from the wild. Our two lovely ladies were stranded as pups and unfortunately could not survive on their own in the wild. So that's when they moved to Blank Park Zoo and became a part of Blank Park Zoo's family. These two girls are wild and full of spirit. They love to learn and they love to show off. When you visit Blank Park Zoo you can see these two girls showing off to the public with their fun, exciting and adventurous behaviors. You'll see big jumps and high speeds on these ladies. They are so much fun to work with but you have to be two steps ahead because they're always thinking of fun ways to mess with us.