Otterly Brilliant! Training Asian Small-Clawed Otters

Here at the Dallas Zoo we have five Asian small-clawed otters. Asian small-clawed are the smallest of the 13 different species of otters throughout the world. We have DJ and Carol Lee as one group and then we have Jimmy, Daphne, and Tasani as a second group. Tasani is a baby. She's two and a half years old now. Otters are very smart and pick up on things really fast. Positive reinforcement training is asking them to do a behavior and then they get a reward for it. So you'll see DJ touches his nose to our hands when we ask him to target so that's to keep him still so that we can then introduce the touch behavior. The idea of that is that if he ever were to get an ear infection or need treatment we have that ability to have him target hold still and it won't be as scary or something that he's not used to having done. Spin is just to see if he's moving well and to make sure that we're getting a view of all parts of his body. And also helps with being able to visually see his chest and his belly and make sure that everything is good there too. So we give the otters their food as a reward. They will take it to the water often and wash it off before they eat it. So they're not put in a situation where they're uncomfortable. It's all done because they want to be there and they know that the reward is something that they can benefit from or that they'll enjoy.