Volunteering | Mammals
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Hugh
To give a glimpse of what’s its like to be a trainer at the Aquarium of the Pacific this week’s blog features a POV (Point of View) video of two of our staff working with their animals.
Volunteer marine mammal trainer Linda and Senior Mammalogist Michele, were kind enough to wear a camera harness while they worked with the animals one Saturday.
In the video Linda is working with our oldest sea lion Miller and one of our youngest sea lions, Harpo, while Michele is working with Brook the sea otter. In the video you will see a cute sequence of Harpo as he is being trained to vocalize, going from a baby growl to a “Big Boy” bark, to the delight of his trainers Linda and Vet Tech Colleen. You will also see Brook the sea otter showing off several behaviors including a fetch behavior and a spin. I also included a short sequence of one of our sea lions, Milo, holding a target pole as Harpo targets on the end of it basically mimicking how our trainers work with a pinniped.
Hopefully in the near future I will be able expand these POV videos to include the animal’s point of view. We are currently training one of our sea lion to voluntarily carry a camera rig that I put together. Stay tuned!
Your Comments
Dan
Saturday, December 05, 2009 05:41 PM
This was really cool! Thanks for sharing. That flip at the end was amazing!
Hugh
Monday, December 14, 2009 07:17 AM
Happy that you enjoyed the video.
All blogs and comments represent the views of the individual authors and not necessarily those of the Aquarium.
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