ABC'S: ANIMAL BEHAVIOR CONCERNS & SOLUTIONS
A Question & Answer Forum For Animal Professionals
Copyright © By Diana Guerrero

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Welcome to the ABC's! Animal Behavior Concerns & Solutions is an animal behavior column written by animal behaviorist and animal trainer, Diana L. Guerrero. Guinea Baboon (Papio hamadryas papio) animal behavior evaluation and primate training strategies. This evaluation for primate training is for a zoological facility. For pet training please visit the pet sections, see our pet behavior booklets in the shop, or visit our teleseminar section.

BEHAVIOR EVALUATION:
Guinea Baboon (Papio hamadryas papio)

QUESTION
We are having some trouble with training one of our baboons (Papio hamadryas papio) to give urine consistently and would like to teach her to voluntarily do a blood draw. Can you give us some suggestions?

DISCUSSION
The animal involved is an adult female within a hierarchy of six animals. She has been diagnosed with diabetes and urine testing is necessary to assist with regulating this problem. Eventually this facility would like to have the animal able to voluntarily cooperate in providing urine, blood draws and in other husbandry procedures.

The animal sometimes urinates upon command but the results are inconsistent and the stimulus control is poor since the keeper must wait for longer periods of time to collect it. In addition there is difficulty in getting the animals to separate voluntarily. Staff numbers are limited which also creates challenges in animal training.

The night quarters is comprised of three solid walls with a meshed wall facing the keeper walkway and service area. Animals move into the night quarters toward the keeper and if they are to move into the adjacent quarters they do so through a guillotine door at the rear of the enclosure. Once through the second door there is no visual contact.

Interior furniture is comprised of a few platforms throughout each room. In addition, the mesh and design of the interior would allow construction of an additional platform at the mesh. This would be ideal for husbandry purposes. The mesh then could be altered for designing a window that would allow various husbandry procedures and a sleeve to be incorporated when needed.

ANSWER
Due to the inconsistency of the response and lack of stimulus control it is suspect as to how clearly the animal understands the training parameters. It also appears that the other members of the group have not been reinforced for separation or for tolerating procedures and training with the female. Also see the last column on giraffe training since it will have some useful hints for you. Here are a few things to work on:

Prepare yourself and the facility through:

Platform Design
Decide where you would like to have this animal stationed and place a mesh shelf on the floor of that area. (Mesh would allow you to place a collection cup underneath or you could design something that has a channel so that the urine can be directed to where you would like it.) This can be gradually raised to a preferred height once you have the behavior under control and get it

Training Plan
Map out what you want and get your pre-training and training goals outlined with the steps that will get you there. Ask and answer a variety of questions such as: Who will do what? What animals should be where? What are the goals for the session? When will you stop? How will you determine when to give a time out?

Literature Search
Do a good literature search since training these types of procedures has been done with different types of primates in different facilities since the late 1970's. You could shortcut your work drastically by reading the papers or talking directly to the facilities. (Please find a selection of some of the most recent listed below.)

Get back to basics:

Train the animal to understand the bridge and reinforcement so that it is clear.
It appears that your female does not clearly understand what is required of her. Define what you want and the steps to get there. For instance, first train the animals to know what the bridge means and what the conditioned reinforcer is. This has to be consistent with all of them and not just the female.

Train the animal to "mark up."
Next, train them to a location/station/mark. Then gradually extend the time that they are to remain there. Some facilities will use shapes and colors to help the animals know where they are expected to be. Different colors and shapes are assigned to different animals. (This is an old studio animal training trick and is popular now in discriminative and cognition work with animals.)

For instance, if you have a blue circle on the path in front of the cage (or on your side of the mesh) then every time you station the animal you train them to recognize it. You can use it like a target and eventually you can place it elsewhere and get the animal to move around more easily.

Handle dominant animals through training before they become problems.
Multiple animals per trainer is difficult but it can be done. Remember that your most dominant animals must be rewarded for toleration, for not antagonizing or bullying the other animals, and for remaining in position. If you focus on getting the more dominant animals under control and then also reward the others for positioning you will find more cooperation and faster progress.

Keep animals stimulated through training.
You'll need to prepare your fellow keepers to deal with boredom (from the animals!) if your sole focus is on training the one animal. You can teach the others to place their hands on the floor, turn their backs to the mesh, and a wide variety of other behaviors that would be useful to their husbandry care later. Be sure to be prepared to keep them occupied since they will eventually get bored with just sitting there doing nothing for you!

RESOURCES OF INTEREST

Laule, G. E., Thurston, R. H., Alford, P. L., & Bloomsmith, M. A. (1996). Training to reliably obtain blood and urine samples from a diabetic chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Zoo Biology, 15, 587-591.

Phillippi-Falkenstein, K. & Clarke, M. R. (1992). Procedure for training corral-living rhesus monkeys for fecal and blood-sample collection. Laboratory Animal Science, 42, 83-85.

Priest, G. M. (1991). Training a diabetic drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) to accept insulin injections and veni-puncture. Laboratory Primate Newsletter, 30[1], 1-4.

Reinhardt, V. (1997) Training nonhuman primates to cooperate during blood collection: a review. Laboratory Primate Newsletter, 36[4], 1-6.

Reinhardt, V. (1991). Training adult male rhesus monkeys to actively cooperate during in-homecage veni-puncture. Animal Technology, 42, 11-17.

Reinhardt, V. (1992). Difficulty in training juvenile rhesus macaques to actively cooperate during venipuncture in the homecage. Laboratory Primate Newsletter, 31[3], 1-2.

Reinhardt, V. & Cowley, D. (1992). In-homecage blood collection from conscious stumptailed macaques. Animal Welfare, 1, 249-255.

Suleman, M. A., Njugana, J., & Anderson, J. (1988). Training of vervet monkeys, Sykes monkeys and baboons for collection of biological samples. Proceedings of the XIIth Congress of the International Primatological Society, p.12 (Abstract).

Vertein, R. & Reinhardt, V. (1989). Training female rhesus monkeys to cooperate during in-homecage venipuncture. Laboratory Primate Newsletter, 28[2], 1-3.

Are you a reader with a question? Be sure to submit it--and good luck in all your training endeavors!

About the columnist: Since 1978 Diana L. Guerrero has worked professionally with both wild and domestic animals. Guerrero has been affiliated with and certified by a variety of animal programs in the USA and Europe. Based in California, she writes, consults, and leads safaris. Information on her animal career programs, training courses, and her books, What Animals Can Teach Us about Spirituality (SkyLight Paths, 2003), Blessing of the Animals (Sterling, 2007), Help! My Pet is Driving Me Crazy (Guerrero Ink, 2007), Animal Disaster Preparedness for Pet Owners & Pet Professionals (Guerrero Ink, 2007) are available through this web site. Questions for ABC's should be submitted to Diana directly through the ABC's zoo questionnaire on this web site, or contact her now.