Virtually everyone who trains animals knows the name B.F. Skinner. Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904–1980) is one of the best-known psychologists in history. His claim to fame is the Skinner Box—a more-refined version of Thorndike’s puzzle box. The box had a lever, a slot for food rewards, and water. The rat could explore and if it happened to press the bar a food pellet would drop into the tray. The cage was wired to automatically record behavior showing the cumulative number of presses per minute. Similar boxes were made for pigeons. Due to this efficient way for testing rats and pigeons

While animal behavior was struggling to become a science, researches, one by one, inched their way closer. One of the first was Ivan Pavlov. Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) In the early 1900s, the Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, was studying digestion in dogs. Pavlov designed and surgically implanted a fistula, which allowed him to measure and analyze gastric secretions after feeding his canine test subjects. His findings from this research eventually won him a Nobel Prize in medicine, which later attributed to his prestigious standing in Russia and among the Academy of Sciences. However, during the course of his research, Pavlov observed

If you ask someone who they think is or was the best animal trainer in history you’ll get many different answers. Some may pick a dog trainer they have seen on T.V. or a lion or horse trainer they have seen at a show. Others may pick a trainer who gives lectures and workshops around the world and whom they have followed and learned from for years. The reality of it is, whether we’re talking about dolphins, pigs, and parrots for shows, dogs, crows, or albatross for military missions, or lions, giraffes, or elephants for husbandry procedures in zoos, trainers

On a warm and slightly overcast morning in 1967, a rusty, mustard-colored station wagon slowly approached the terminal at San Francisco International Airport. Wheels still rolling, a door opened and something gray jumped out. As the wagon continued on its way, an animal headed toward the terminal. It was a cat. Straight five steps, then wait. The glass door opened and as a portly man in a business suit dragged his overnight bag through it, the cat darted in. Straight 10 paces and the cat was inside the terminal. It headed left 20 feet, then right 30 feet, then left

While I don’t agree with everything Ray says, what Ray taught me is that we always should seek to view commonly held ideas in a new light. Questioning what we know, challenging what we have heard, and testing our ideas to see if they hold up is what makes animal behavior a science. don_owings Don Owings Probably few, if any, dog trainers know Don Owings (pictured to the right) because he’s a giant in another field of behavior—acoustic communication in animals. He was one of my mentors when I was earning my animal behavior Masters. What Don gave me was a sense of the

Thursdays are always the worst day for little dogs to play fetch at my local park. That’s because mowing is Fridays and on Thursdays the grass is often over one-tennis ball tall. It was on one such Thursday after having to search for my dog’s ball for the third time, that I exclaimed, “It sure would be useful if, instead of being green, this tennis ball were blue and yellow. Then, Jonesy could more easily find it himself.” Well, a passing pet owner quickly corrected me. “That wouldn’t help. Dogs are color blind.” For a second I thought, Duh, that’s