Hey girls and boys! I'm Abby Brown.
I don't know about you, but I think sea lions are pretty
cute. They always look like they're having fun.
They can walk on land with their flippers and swim very fast
in the water. Plus, it seems like sea lions understand
humans. It must be because they are so intelligent.
Here at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines the sea lions
love to work with their trainer and show off for anyone else
who is watching too.
Get ready to get a little wet and Go a little Wild with
Iowa PBS and the Blank Park Zoo as we learn about sea lions.
♪♪
Do you have a dog at home or a hamster?
A 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 is one group of party animals
that love to be trained for the spotlight, sea
lions.
♪♪
Thank you, Abby.
My name is Shannon McKinney and I'm here at
Blank Park Zoo in our Hub Harbor with Zoe and Addie,
two beautiful sea lions.
We are joining a training demonstration right now.
As you can see, Zoe and Addie 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.
Shannon: The clicker is what is known as a bridge
and what it means is that the behavior we have 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.
♪♪
Shannon: 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 check up, so lifting their
flippers or opening their 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.
The have high speed and great jumps.
Shannon: Zoe and Addie 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 is 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.
Shannon: Thank you so much for joining me and Zoe and
Addie.
Now, we're going to go over to the giraffe and
see how we use the same training with these guys
that we can do with our giraffe friends.
Come join me!
♪♪
Shannon: Now, before we
get started I just want to mention a few things.
You will see myself and our trainers wearing masks
and that is because we're trying to protect and keep
the animals safe.
So don't worry, we just want to make sure all of
our animals are safe while we're working in close
contact with them.
Shannon: So now we'll get over to the training.
♪♪
Shannon: This is husbandry training, so
what that means is we train behaviors that allow
us to take better care of our giraffe and allow them
to participate in their own health care.
♪♪
Shannon: So some of the behaviors you'll
see are we might look at their hooves or their
tongue.
We can target them, that is what that little ball
on a stick is.
And when we target them that allows us to hold
their focus and get them close to us so if we need
to train a new behavior or a different behavior we
can use that.
♪♪
Shannon: You'll see our keeper is giving
out nice, yummy treats.
Our giraffe love apples and sweet potatoes and
carrots as their fun, yummy treats.
♪♪
Shannon: Some of the different behaviors
that we do allow us to do more detailed health care.
So we can draw blood from our giraffe, we even x-ray
their hooves.
Did you know that giraffe get pedicures?
Ours do.
We have a farrier who is someone who focuses just
on hooves come in and file our giraffe hooves down to
keep them healthy and to help them with their
walking.
Shannon: Let's see if we can see some of the fun
behaviors right here with Sky.
Sky is one of our younger giraffe.
She is six years old.
And you can see the trainer is working with
her to back up and the tongue, look at that big,
long tongue.
We can also do a side visit, so if we need to
get to just the side of Sky we can do that and so
we can get a nice look at her whole body.
♪♪
Shannon: Thank you so much for joining us at
the giraffe training session.
♪♪
Aren't those African species incredible?
And I told you those sea lions were cute.
I hope you learned as much about them as I did.
They are extraordinary creatures.
Thank you for Going Wild with Iowa
PBS and the Blank Park Zoo.
I'm Abby Brown.
And as always, remember to ask questions and wonder.
That's what science is all about.
♪♪