Hello! My name is Dr. Sara Skiba and I have nearly a decade of experience working with nonhuman primates. My expertise is in great ape social behavior, communication, and cognition. In this article, I will share with you how the Ape Initiative team used positive reinforcement training to administer the COVID-19 vaccination to our closest living relatives – the bonobo.

My name is Melanie Johnson, I am Senior Aquarist for Fish and Invertebrates at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. I grew up in someplace you would never think an aspiring marine biologist would grow roots: Phoenix, Arizona (Think of the hottest place on Earth, its probably a little hotter than that…probably).

My name is Matt Leung and I am a New Yorker animal keeper working with giant pandas in Hong Kong. I have been working with them for over 10 years now, and prior to that I have also worked with marine mammals in the US, where I learned a lot about animal training.

Trainers use different techniques within the operant conditioning but, without a doubt, the targeting or use of the target, is one of the most known and used in animal training.

To put ourselves in context, we first need to know that targeting is the process of teaching an animal to touch or follow a target with some part of its body. Once this is known, the possibilities for training are endless.

Sometimes when we are training with our animals we find peculiar situations and we realize that we do not differ so much from each other, because suddenly, we see that they have forgotten a behavior that seemed well learned.

My name is Kim Wilkins and my animal training career began in 2007 when I joined the animal presentations team at Bristol Zoo, training display animals for the educational shows. I then moved to Onmega dolphin therapie in Marmaris Turkey and trained dolphins for public interactions and dolphin-assisted therapy.