 Amy Sutherland New England-based freelancer Amy Sutherland’s June 25 column entitled What Shamu Taught Me about a Happy Marriage has had a remarkable run at the top of the New York Times' most e-mailed list and enjoyed wide circulation among behavior analysts. In it, Sutherland wrote about using the techniques exotic animal trainers use on dolphins and other animals to improve her husband’s domestic behavior. Ignore the bad behavior and praise the ones you want, she wrote, and just like you can teach an aquatic mammal to jump through hoops, you can teach a hubby to put his laundry in the hamper. Sutherland came upon the applicability of behavioral methods while researching her new book, Kicked, Bitten and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World's Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers (Viking, June 2006). Both the book and the column have raised public awareness of animal training and the behavioral principles used at the Exotic Animal Training and Management Program at California's Moorpark College – where she spent a year following new students as they learned to work with the exotic (baboons and cougars) and not-so-exotic animals (snakes and rats) in the teaching zoo. Ms. Sutherland spent most of her childhood in suburban Cincinnati and earned her Master’s in journalism at Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism. She has held staff positions at the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, and the Burlington Free Press. Her articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Disney Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times, among other notable publications. She has received numerous awards, including the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer Award and the John D. Donoghue Award for Arts Criticism. |
| Abstract: While working on my book, Kicked, Bitten and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers, I expected to learn a lot. I did. I learned female baboons prefer male trainers, that parrots can break a broomstick with their beaks, that cheetahs don't have collar bones and that human psychology is the basis for progressive training. At Moorpark College's Exotic Animal Training Program, I watched students learn the basics of operant conditioning in the classroom, then apply what they had just learned to a badger or a Bengal tiger. I learned how B. F. Skinner's ideas revolutionized training in this country, and in doing so, greatly improved the lives of captive animals. And I learned that what works at the zoo, works at home. |