Dolphin training in Kolmården's Dolphinarium
In dolphin training you encourage and reward the dolphins and therefore
you never punish them when they do something wrong. Dolphins in captivity start
their training when they are a few years old. When you begin to train a dolphin
or teach it a new behaviour you train everything in small steps until the
dolphin knows the whole behaviour. When training dolphins you use a whistle.
The whistle is used to tell the dolphin that it did the right thing and
therefore the very first thing you need to teach a dolphin is that the whistle
means something good. To do this the trainers blow the whistle for example
while giving the dolphin a fish. To tell the dolphins what to do the trainers
use a simple sign language. Each behaviour has its own sign and the dolphins
know what the different signs mean.
So this is what happens when the dolphin trainer asks a dolphin to, for
example, jump:
1. The dolphin trainer shows the sign that means that the dolphin is
supposed to jump.
2. The dolphin understands the sign and does the behaviour.
3. The dolphin trainer blows the whistle to tell the dolphin that it did
the right thing.
4. The dolphin returns to the trainer and gets some kind of reward.
Mostly the reward is some kind of fish but it could also be that the dolphin
trainer pets the dolphin since dolphins love to spend time with their trainers.