Typically, animal care workers focus their training efforts on encouraging an animal to do something that it isn’t yet doing or training the animal to not do something that it is doing. At birth, all animals come genetically programmed for defense. From the human perspective, these behaviors are often closely linked with aggression. This presentation will focus on a variety of common behavioral problems encountered with animals in a zoological setting with special attention paid to the reduction of aggression. The presentation will identify the classes of animals that pose serious risks to animal care workers and develop strategies for reducing the risks when working in close proximity with those taxa.
