KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 27, 2021 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 junior Jessica Weidemann hopes to work at a zoo or aquarium when she graduates, and she knows that she\u2019ll need skills in animal training if she hopes to get her foot in the door for the highly competitive jobs. So she enrolled in an advanced animal behavior class this semester that has her training animals at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Peckham Farm.<\/p>\n
The most challenging exercise so far has been training a chicken.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think of chickens as being very smart going into it, but my chicken has been very easy going and has caught on to everything pretty quickly,\u201d said Weidemann, an animal science major from Morristown, New Jersey<\/strong>, who is also interning at Mystic Aquarium. \u201cIt depends on the chicken and how you approach training. Mine is easily motivated by rewards.\u201d<\/p>\n Each of the 13 students in Assistant Professor Justin Richard\u2019s class is assigned a chicken and is instructed to train it to do several required behaviors, as well as other behaviors the students choose themselves. All train the birds to understand that when they hear a clicker, a food reward will be delivered. They also train the birds to peck at a target. Some students are also training their chickens to get on a scale to be weighed, identify a particular color, or jump through a hoop.<\/p>\n