WildView™

February 14, 2016

Wild Kiss

- as seen by -

Julie Larsen

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While this might look like harbor seals “kissing”, it is actually a behavior learned through positive reinforcement training. This training is used with many animals that live at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium.

“We train in small steps to approximate the kiss behavior,” says NYA wild animal keeper Kayla Bergman. “Now, when the seals are next to each other during our training sessions, they often choose to repeat what they have learned and “kiss” on their own.”

See how Kayla and the NYA keepers worked with our Pacific walrus for another interesting behavior in Super Soaker.

Nikon D4

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