I’m going to stick with my cats theme for my Friday Time Killer this week because as you kow, Everyone knows all librarians have cats. If you’re reading this you’re probably a librarian, so chances are good you have a cat!
I spotted this Reuters Article Wednesday on Russian clown Yuri Kuklachev. Yuri has a troupe of cats who do handstands, crawl along high wires and balance on balls and he says the secret to training them is realizing that you can’t force cats to do anything. The Village Voice interviewed him last year, The Christian Science Monitor did the same several years ago as well.
Sharing his secrets over caviar and blintzes in Brighton Beach, a New York neighborhood known as Little Russia, Kuklachev said he plans to write a book about how to train cats since so many people are asking him.
Kuklachev, 56, said his cat-training method also can be applied to children.
Dolphin Training and Positive Feedback
Science had an article about this several years ago, showing how positive feedback was used in working with dolphins. Since you can’t shock an animal in the water, and it is difficult to hit a dolphin underwater with your hand, positive feedback is the only way to get them to cooperate.
In a rare bit of scientific gossip, Science also said that dolphin researchers had the best behaved children of all the sciences.
I won’t comment on the behavior of the children of librarians, who are obviously not trained by positive feedback.