Animal Behavior Case Study

Part 1 A. Understanding animal behavior is crucial aspect of becoming an Animal Care Worker, and to successfully work with animals you must be able to understand what they are communicating to you. Since animals are not capable of speaking to us and just telling us what is wrong or why they are performing a certain behaviour, we must be able to analyze and understand what they are saying in their language for reasons such as the safety of ourselves, the animal, and the people we work with, and applying behavioural modifications to counter undesirable behaviours. Many animals perform behaviours that can be difficult to interpret or that seem irrational, but with an understanding of animal behaviour we can apply our knowledge to help find the

The use of classical conditioning is common in many animal fields, it is a straight forward method of training that is often easy for most animals of varying intellect to pick up. One of my future goals is to work in a shelter or rescue environment, especially with dogs and it is likely classical conditioning would be a regular part of my day to day, considering many animals brought to shelters have various behavioural issues. The method of classical conditioning would assist in gaining the trust of a scared or aggressive dog, give a hyperactive and unruly puppy a focal point, or even help a feral cat associate good things with human interaction. It’s a simple method that would essentially allow the animals to associate positive feelings with the people interacting with them. Additionally, if these animals associate nice, positive feelings with those working with them, it will make having to interact with one another a much safer and more enjoyable event for both parties. They must be observed, examined, and sometimes medicated by medical and care staff regularly and that is not often a positive experience for an animal. With the use of classical conditioning, this can make not only the experience more positive for the animal, it can make the workers job easier and safer if the dog or cat knows something good is coming right after the thing they didn’t

The only time Skye was ever asked to sit was when she was going out for a walk, beyond that it was not a reinforced behaviour, so she didn’t understand why she was supposed to sit outside the context of getting ready for a walk. What happened with Skye is that she learned the word sit, but she hadn’t truly learned what it actually meant and instead just understood that if I do this, we go for a walk and therefor, performed the command only in anticipation of the single scenario reinforcing