Ep67 with Jay Pratte in remembrance of Else Poulsen, positive reinforcement training and Borscht the bear

<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #080708;">This podcast is dedicated to Else Poulsen (1955 to 2016)</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #080708;">“Bears just do things for Bear reasons”</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Jay Pratte is the Director of Animal Care, Conservation and Education at the Utica Zoo in the state of New York, USA.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Jay shares with us how his interest in animal behaviour initiated in Waterton Park whilst on a high school camping trip. While exploring the environment, Jay walked upon a doe. He approached her slowly with grass, observing her body language and adjusting himself to reduce the chance of her running. Although his father found it confusing, Jay thought this way of behaving was normal and thus carried it with him with his training.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Jays’ family expected him to be a lawyer due to his high grades. Consequently, he studied environmental law at Alberta University. He explained that by chance a friend told him about big cats which were housed outside the city in a roadside zoo, whereby Jay proceeded to volunteer there, shortly followed by employment. During his employment, he further observed that human behaviours cause animals to adjust their behaviours accordingly. As such, Jay changed his studies to behavioural psychology and zoology. From this Jay trained animals for the film industry, then moved to Dallas Zoo working in the ExxonMobil Tiger habitat managing their training programmes. What Jay learnt here, he transferred to his job working with Giant Pandas at Zoo Atlanta, China.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Jay talks about his current effort in shutting down facilities with poor animal welfare alongside groups such as USDA, PETA and HSUS. This starts with a request to change but frequently ends with litigation. Jay references a couple of facilities in which he helped shut down including Wildlife in Need after observations