Positive Reinforcement Training for a Trunk Wash in Nepal's Working Elephants: Demonstrating Alternatives to Traditional Elephant Training Techniques

Abstract

Many trainers of animals in the zoo now rely on positive reinforcement training to teach animals to voluntarily participate in husbandry and veterinary procedures in an effort to improve behavioral reliability, captive management, and welfare. However, captive elephant handlers in Nepal still rely heavily on punishment- and aversion-based methods. The aim of this project was to determine the effectiveness of secondary positive reinforcement (SPR) in training free-contact elephants in Nepal to voluntarily participate in a trunk wash for the purpose of tuberculosis testing. Five female elephants, 4 juveniles and 1 adult, were enrolled in the project. Data were collected in the form of minutes of training, number of offers made for each training task, and success rate for each task in performance tests. Four out of 5 elephants, all juveniles, successfully learned the trunk wash in 35 sessions or fewer, with each session lasting a mean duration of 12 min. The elephants' performance improved from a mean success rate of 39.0% to 89.3% during the course of the training. This study proves that it is feasible to efficiently train juvenile, free-contact, traditionally trained elephants in Nepal to voluntarily and reliably participate in a trunk wash using only SPR techniques.

Keywords::

• positive reinforcement
• training
• elephant
• clicker training
• operant conditioning
• trunk wash

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank Nepal's Department of National Park and Wildlife Conservation, the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, the National Trust for Nature Conservation of Nepal, all the staff at the Elephant Breeding Center, Sarah Lim, and Yamini Chalam for providing access to the elephants and aiding the research process. Thank you to Margaret Whittaker, Performing Animal Welfare Society, Dr. Susan Mikota, Otto Fad, Laurie Pond, Helena Telkänranta, and Phyllis Mann for the benefit of their expert knowledge and guidance.