“Poison dart frogs in captivity are not poisonous” I told my mother, with my face pressed up on frog glass at the veterinarian’s office. We were taking my cockatiel, Laverne, for a checkup. This was not the first time I had seen them. I had traveled to a handful of the zoos in the North East, where they displayed them
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Present time is here. If you are hurrying around looking for something great to give to your animal enthusiast, here are some of oldies but goodies for this holiday season. “Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine” by Marion Nestle I just got the book, although it is a few years old now. This book is a serious
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Mother’s day. Father’s day. College graduations in May. Pre-k through high school graduations in June. And birthdays year round. What is the most frightening of all of these? The recipients not enjoying their presents. We all have pictures of our younger selves playing with refrigerator boxes or empty pots and pans, sometimes with brand new toys right next to us.
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Targeting might be the most beneficial behavior you could train your pet. When an animal targets, you are asking them to aim a body part towards a specific object. Once trained, this behavior has endless possibilities. A hamster shows aggressive behavior towards hands whenever they enter the cage to change food and water bowls. The hamster could be trained to
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If it walks like one, talks like one and looks like one — it must be one. Of all the pets I have cared for, ducks have definitely brought me the most attention. I am not talking about getting ducklings on a whim for Easter either. I kept ducks as pets from fifth grade through college. In sixth grade, my
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Contrafreeloading puts a smile on my face. As a student of animal behavior, it is one of the coolest phenomena I know of. It has been studied in many species from rats to grizzly bears to humans. It is so incredible because these animals do the opposite of what you would expect, hence the “contra” prefix. Contrafreeloading means, when given
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Art or Science? Animal training is a little bit of both. Timing and communication flow together with basic laws of behavior and form actions. Before we get into the specific behaviors we ask our pets, we should first learn how to train them. Positive reinforcement is associated with : negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. It is not important
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Stepping off the plane onto Costa Rica’s soil, in the winter of 2008, I made a fool of myself. I followed the stream of people hurrying out of the airport and found a young heavily bearded Caucasian man holding a DANTA sign. Around him was a harem of young girls around my age. I was one of the last people
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DANTAisms 