Ep72 Kirstin Anderson Hansen on positive reinforcement training for positive animal welfare and conservation

<p><span style="color: #080708;">Let’s welcome Dr. Kirstin Anderson Hansen for today’s podcast as she takes us on an exciting life journey through her experiences in animal training and bioacoustics of marine animals.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">As a 13-year-old, Kirsten encountered her first surreal sighting of swimming killer whales whilst journeying on a bike on the San Juan islands off the coast of Washington State. This set the course as a marine biologist for this Colorado girl, starting from high school to post-doctorate.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Kirstin shares how operant conditioning for communicating with animals is all about, “Teaching animals to be comfortable in the world that they live in!” She explains that training animals in co-operating for their own wellbeing is a priority. It helps showcase the animal’s natural behaviours and individual personalities for public education, she believes.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Although her MSc was related to bioacoustics of mimicry in beluga whales, her PhD involved training a great cormorant named Loke, taking part in an underwater behavioural hearing test to prove birds could hear underwater. The highlight was that against all popular beliefs at the time, Loke was trained with only positive reinforcement to voluntarily take part in the study. Kirstin made it a fun, interesting, challenging and motivating problem-solving task for him.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Kirstin reveals more goodies about Loke and auditory brain responses of wild puffins in the form of brain waves. She stresses the importance of the collaboration between animal welfare scientists, researchers, and animal care personnel for prioritizing positive welfare of research animals.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Kirstin shares more regarding training for husbandry to reduce stress by providing the animal with choice and control to stay in, or leave the task. She expresses that positive reinforcement tra