Free Killing Keiko by Mark A. Simmons Page A

to drag on with no end in sight. I was like a five-year-old sitting in church,
     fidgeting and struggling to pay attention. An eternity seemed to pass before the session
     was finally over. At last, Stephen stood upright, gave yet another signal with both
     hands, then promptly walked away from the session.
    Afterwards I walked up on the bridge that connected the two main decks of the bay
     pen, the best vantage point to observe both the north and south pools. Keiko stayed
     right where they ended the session for a minute or so, and then turned slowly on his
     side violently throwing his head down, mouth open all the while and shaking one massive
     pectoral flipper wildly in the air. Rolling back to an upright position he took one
     explosive breath and started a slow counter clockwise swim in the north pool. W
hat the hell was that all about?
I wondered.
    The odd behavior I had witnessed after the session ended was referred to as “thrashing”
     by the staff. To me, it appeared like frustration, a temper tantrum. Apparently, this
     was something that occurred with regularity and not necessarily during or immediately
     after training sessions. Sometimes it occurred seemingly at random, but always during
     normal daytime work hours. To my knowledge, the thrashing behavior never occurred
     at night or when trainers were ordinarily not present.
    Standing atop the bridge I pondered every possible factor that might surround this
     odd behavior. I stared down at Keiko as he returned to his presession spot and slowly
     drifted to a stop at the surface. The sight of him broke my train of thought. If I
     didn’t know better, I would have thought this was a pregnant female. I had seen fat
     dolphins before, but never a fat killer whale. From directly above, he looked like
     a giant guppy with his dorsal muscle ridge framed against a bulging undercarriage.
     Wow! I wanted to talk to Robin badly, but with the staff around and not wanting to
     insult my new acquaintances, there wasn’t much I could say, at least not yet.
Ground Zero
    Where I came from, killer whales were wickedly alert, fast and bright-eyed. In the
     training environment, a trainer gets what he or she pays for … meaning that behavior
     follows reinforcement. Further, dominant traits of an animal in a training scenario
     often betray the tendencies of the animal’s trainer or trainers. They are clues to
     where the majority of effort has been focused (sometimes with purpose and sometimes
     completely unwittingly).
    Think of a dog that jumps on its owner every day when the owner arrives home. The
     owner says “no” in a stern voice. Nevertheless, without fail, the dog continues jumping
     on its owner each day. Simply put, the owner is a reinforcing quality in the dog’s
     life. Regardless of what the owner says when the dog jumps, the dog is getting attention
     from its owner, so the behavior is strengthened.
    In this context, the word “reinforcement” refers to what happens immediately “after”
     a behavior to strengthen or increase the likelihood that the behavior will occur again.
     Not all consequences are reinforcing. Punishment for instance, has the opposite effect,
     reducing the behavior it follows. Specifically, reinforcement is said to “reinforce,”
     strengthening the specific behavior it follows. If the consequence of a behavior causes
     that behavior to increase in frequency then that outcome is reinforcing (empirically
     defined). More to the point on Keiko, if “slowness” is reinforced, the result is a
     lethargic animal. On the other hand, if an atmosphere of high energy is cultivated
     by consistently reinforcing quick responses and attentive behavior, the result is
     a highly engaged and responsive animal.
    “S d ” is the designation for Discriminative Stimulus. It is a specific signal that requests
     a specific response or behavior from the animal. S d ’s can be hand signals, like sign language, or they can be audible signals or