If someone owns a polar bear with dental caries, that guy has a big problem: he owns a polar bear! Besides being dangerous, illegal, unethical and unmoral, owning a polar bear has to be very expensive.

Most of us never had, and will never have, to deal with health issues of polar bears. However, zookeepers and veterinarians have to deal with animal health issues everyday, and sometimes with polar bear’s teeth decay.

Health issues of a captive animal directly affect the biological and psychological welfare of that animal. So, quick diagnostic procedures are, or should be, a priority for modern zoos.

But, how to know if the polar bear has dental caries? Or the elephant is shortsighted? Or the penguin has lost weight? Well, some modern zoos are using positive training (reward-based training) as a quick and non-invasive way to assess health issues in captive wild animals.

Through positive training, which is based on principles of operant conditioning, some modern zoos have obtained the cooperation of their animals during diagnosis.

It is quite fascinating to know that polar bears open their mouth to let the vet check their teeth, penguins voluntarily step on a scale so zookeepers can weight them, tigers offer their tales to let the vet get a blood sample, and diabetic chimpanzees voluntarily extend their arms to receive their daily injections.

But it is even more fascinating to know all those amazing things happen because of mutual respect and cooperation between zookeepers and animals that have been trained without any punishment.

While this kind of training is not new, it was not accepted by zoos until a few decades ago. It was Karen Pryor, a biologist and dolphin trainer, one of the few scientists that strongly promoted positive training as an effective way to deal with captive animals.

Practitioners of her training method, known as clicker training, are increasing quickly.

Positive training should be part of enrichment programs of every current zoo and aquarium in the world. Hopefully, it will become a standard part of zoo procedures in the following years.

While training shouldn’t be the only way of environmental/behavioral enrichment, it certainly can play an important role in any enrichment program.

Hopefully, environmental and behavioral enrichment guidelines will find grater acceptance beyond zoos and aquaria. It would be great to find those guidelines while reading books about dogs, cats, hamsters or any other pet. I believe this will happen soon.

Meanwhile, keep yourself away from polar bears with dental caries.