Keeping It Positive: Target Training

A little positivity goes a long way! At the National Aquarium, staff utilize a technique known as target training to care for some of the animals here. This foundational training method rewards animals for interacting with a specific object—the target. It's one of several training methods the Aquarium's Animal Care team uses to meet the unique needs of the animals in our care.

What Is Target Training?

Target training invites animals to participate in their care, which maintains and advances their wellbeing through behavioral training and creates trust between them and their trainers. After selecting a behavior to work on, trainers create a training plan that includes a goal and the steps needed to achieve it.

When creating a target training plan, trainers first find a target the animal can perceive and respond to. Then, they decide how to present the target, choose how the animal should interact with it (for example, touching or not touching it), and figure out the steps needed to train the behavior.

Using positive reinforcement means that training sessions often revolve around feeding times because food is a strong reward. However, many animals don't eat every day, so their eating schedules may limit training sessions to one to three days a week. Trainers make the most of each session by learning to adapt plans to animals' individual behaviors.

Training doubles as enrichment, offering animals exercise and new skills to learn. For caretakers, it can lay the groundwork for teaching more complex behaviors like entering a transport carrier or stretcher. Let's watch six animals at the Aquarium demonstrate their skills!

Lend Me Your Ears

Curiosity and a love of food make a species an excellent candidate for target training. The lungfish in Australia: Wild Extremes check both boxes. Lungfish's size and strength can make them tricky to care for, but target training makes it safer for them and their caretakers. Since lungfish can't see well, aquarists shake maracas or bells underwater to ask the fish to come to the edge of their habitat. The aquarists will then give the lungfish food, usually krill or fruit, and practice medical behaviors such as administering medicine or checking their fins and scales. Aquarists will also gently apply pressure around the lungfish's body to get them used to passive restraint techniques aquarists use to guide them into a stretcher for care outside the exhibit.

Hip Hip Hoo-Ray

Blacktip Reef is home to many large animals, including Lady Ray, a reticulated whiptail ray, who weighs over 230 pounds. Due to her size and enthusiasm for training, figuring out the best target for her took some trial and error. Initially, her team used a flat target held by a diver and asked her to touch her nose to it, but they then switched to a bucket covered in black and white tape that better protects the diver's hand. During sessions, her trainers can use the target to practice guiding her onto a stretcher voluntarily. In the event she needs medical care, staff are training her to actively participate in her care by moving onto the stretcher to be hoisted out of the exhibit.

How to Train a Dragon

Target training sets the stage for better communication and lets ambassador animals, like Dratini, a bearded dragon, learn how to express their interest in doing an Animal Encounter. During training, Dratini's trainer moves her target, a blue ball on a stick, around the room for her to follow. She gets food every time she touches the target with her tongue. Dratini is a small animal who gets full quickly, which can cut training sessions short. To maximize Dratini's progress, her trainer is intentional with their time and plans sessions out in advance.

Due to her success with this foundational training, Dratini's trainer now uses the target for crate training. Dratini participates in Animal Encounters as an ambassador animal and can be transported to and from the stage in a crate. Crate training allows Dratini to communicate whether she wants to do a presentation. If Dratini enters the crate when the target is placed inside, she's telling her trainers that she's ready to go!

Hopeful Ambassador

Copper, a corn snake, is the Aquarium's newest ambassador animal in training. While training, Copper's caretaker opens the door to his habitat and gently waves a target around. Once Copper makes it within a certain range of the target, the trainer gives him food as positive reinforcement. Copper is taught to just move toward his target—not touch it like other animals. Because the target is associated with food, and snakes strike at their food, his trainer doesn't want him striking the target. The team plans to use this foundational training to teach Copper to move in and out of his transport bin for Animal Encounters—just like Dratini!

Potentially Movin' On Out

The Aquarium's Animal Care and Rescue Center (ACRC) is home to numerous animals, including Odie, a Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Sea turtles are strongly motivated by food, which makes them great candidates for target training. But Odie's skittish personality required extra planning. Target training builds trust, so his caretakers first worked on finding a target that wouldn't spook him. Odie responded well to a blue rubber dog toy, so staff began using it to train him, using food like shrimp and soft-shell crab as reinforcement. His caretakers also use a pinger device that makes a sound in the water to get Odie's attention.

Establishing Odie's target training routine took time, but his success makes his caretakers hopeful that he will one day move to Atlantic Coral Reef. In the exhibit, his training will allow his caretakers to call him over for feeding time to better track what he eats or ask him to enter a transport carrier to be moved out of the exhibit for care.

Shaking Up Routine

Munchkin, a map pufferfish, came to the Aquarium at a young age and resides at the ACRC. When training, Munchkin's caretakers place his target, a small stick with a circular object on the end, into the water and give him a piece of fish or shrimp after he swims up to the target. His trainers then move the target and ask Munchkin to swim to it again, continuing the session for as long as he is interested and hungry!

Munchkin began training soon after arriving at the Aquarium, but his trainers are still figuring out how he learns best. He prefers to eat in the afternoon, often ignoring attempts to train in the morning. His caretakers are adding flexibility to his schedule by slowly training earlier. This flexibility is important because at some point in the future, staff may need him to participate in a training session at any time of the day.