Breakfast is done, the yard is clean, now what? Well, it almost 9:00 so its time for the cheetahs to head back outside.
Before we leave the building, we update the dry erase board so that anyone who comes in the barn knows where all the animals are.
translation: dogs are in the back and side yards, cheetahs have access to the exhibit and barn
One of the highlights of SOS Cheetah was the lure course – here you can see some great footage of the world’s fastest land mammal…But first, its never-before-seen footage of the cheetah exhibit’s fastest canine:
The lure course is an important part of our Enrichment Program for the cheetahs and dogs. Not only is it great exercise, its an opportunity for them to exhibit a behavior that they would do in the wild – chasing down prey. Of course the prey in this case is a toy, which they gladly trade for some meat at the end of the run.
Sometimes we teach an animal how to do something then one day they won’t do it any more. Maybe they forget, maybe they’re confused, we don’t always know why. Regardless of the reason, one way we fix it is to “go back to kindergarten”, a trainer’s term for taking a few steps backward in the process.
After a few sessions of really speedy running, the cheetahs started to slow down. There are a couple ways we could handle this. The first method is to find something else that makes cheetahs want to run fast. Hmmm, what could that be…
Ha Ha. Carnivore keepers think they are SO funny
Cheetahs love to chase things. In fact, they can’t help it, if something is moving, they want to chase it. When they were little, one of their favorite games was to chase a ball. Ta-dah! we found a way to get the cheetahs to run again. And lick the camera, what’s that about?
The principles of animal training are the same for all species, from your dog at home to a cheetah at the zoo. Our favorite training method is positive reinforcement – simply put, when the animal does what the trainer asks, they get something they like (which in the case of cheetahs is a big pile of meat). The animal then makes a positive association with that behavior and wants to do it again.
As I mentioned earlier, we want to show off the cheetah’s speed. Contrary to popular opinion, cheetahs don’t spend their day racing around at 65 mph. Running is a lot of work, especially when your food just sits on a plate waiting for you.
The cheetahs were already trained to come to the trainer when called so we started by calling them out to the front of the exhibit. The faster they run, the bigger the treat. Check out the Cheetah Cam:
Fast running = Big Pile o’ Meat. See, this isn’t that hard.
Hey, that’s a little close, watch out for the —
Don’t worry, no cheetahs or cameras were harmed in this little test. Video is a great tool for animal trainers and we can use it to go back and see what worked and what didn’t work. We’ve been taking video of the cheetahs and dogs since they arrived here and it also helps us see how much they have improved.
Of course, video also makes a great tool for a blog so we’ll be posting a lot of it here. If you want to see videos or more than just cheetahs and dogs, check out the Houston Zoo’s YouTube channel.