How to Become an Exotic Animal Trainer

Animal trainers are more diverse than the dolphin trainers at SeaWorld, or the likes of Siegfried and Roy with their white tiger. Animal trainers are extensively employed from zoos to Hollywood, where animals are often some of the most demanding and exhausting actors. It is an exciting but dangerous job, and it also requires the patience and wisdom of a caretaker.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Ask yourself if you are truly, truly an animal person. An animal person is someone who has been in love with the animal kingdom since the time they were a child, and who would be willing to shovel animal poop for twelve hours a day, for weeks, if it meant that they might one day teach a camel how to play basketball, or an old baboon how to take its insulin medication.

2. In school, take science courses. Animal training is as much about physiology as about psychology. If you think that being an animal trainer is like being a veterinarian, except without the anatomy lessons, than you are very, very wrong. Familiarize yourself with operant conditioning, the science first discovered by B.F. Skinner when he made dogs drool on cue.

3. Apply to the Moorpark College Exotic Animal Training and Management (EATM) Program. It is a two-year associate's degree at a community college outside of Los Angeles, and one of the only programs in all of the United States for animal trainers.

4. Endure amazing, and often hellish new experiences. Your education will own you for the next two years. You will inevitably be bitten multiple times, and probably incur a lot of debt. Always wash your hands. And never forget that an animal you truly love could easily kill you.

5. With luck and perseverance, graduate. Step out into the job market, and try your luck.

[mibestestfri]

on 10/21/2008 conditioning is not a science and B.F.Skinner discovered classical conditioning.

[mibestestfri]

on 10/21/2008 miss, Skinner dealt with CLASSICAL conditioning.