As members of the Animal Training department we are fortunate to perform in shows and host animal interaction programs. These duties are obvious but there are some not so obvious things about our career that most would find interesting. I hereby present to you...
Little Known Facts about Being on the Animal Training Team at SeaWorld San Antonio
The most important type of training that we do is called husbandry. It is the science of training animals to cooperate with us to that we can give them excellent care. Husbandry behaviors include voluntarily allowing us to withdraw blood samples, perform sonograms, and collect bodily fluids.
Katie gets a fluke present from Sikku. From this position we can collect blood, urine, or even milk.Although many think that we have college backgrounds in marine biology, most trainers studied psychology in college. One aspect of psychology is behavior modification and it's those principles that we use when training animals.
The people who perform in the shows are the same people who train the animals. There are not separate training and performing staffs. Animal trainers do it all! Before each show we have a meeting to discuss show roles, animals, behavioral goals, and troubleshoot and plan for challenges.
We spend a lot of time with fish and even after multiple showers and repeated hand washings we still smell like the capelin, herring, squid, and salmon that we feed to our animals. Occasionally we'll even find a scale stuck to us hours after leaving work!
Jason prepares several pounds of herring to be fed to the belugas in the Beluga Interaction Program.On the average, it takes an animal about two years to perform all roles in a show. In contrast, it usually takes a trainer three years to begin performing the most basic roles in a show. Realize that when you watch us in a show, what we do is not as easy as it looks. For every successful sea lion dance or beluga ballet there are many that are less than graceful and many are downright hilarious. Practice makes perfect though and we spend a lot of time practicing. (I wish you could see some of our rehearsal footage. You would be ROFL!)
At any given time we are surrounded by a collective 60 to 150 years of animal training experience. This makes our jobs much more accessible to professional collaboration. Our oldest animal trainer is in his 50s with over 30 years experience in the field and our youngest is 19 and still in college.
All trainers must pass a rigorous swim test demonstrating freestyle swimming, a difficult underwater breath hold test, and be able to swim to the bottom of the beluga pool which is 25 feet deep. (BTW... "Old man" Joe is one of the most fit people in the department. He does better on the swim test than some of the trainers half his age. Way to go, Joe!)
Working with the animals accounts for only a small portion of our work day. We're also busy serving on various park committees, doing computer work, and tons of cleaning. We not only clean fish buckets and pools, but our toilets and shower facilities as well!
It's a small price to pay for having such a wonderful career.
Editors Note: Read more about the benefits of animal training on SeaWorld.org
