WEPA - Working Elephant Programme of Asia

WEPA - Working Elephant Programme of Asia - Positive Learning Method

Working Elephant Programme of Asia
Science-based, animal-friendly methods for training and handling of working elephants

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Positive Learning Method

The Positive Learning Method is an elephant training procedure based on a set of techniques that are well established in the science and practice of animal training: rewarding, pressure-release, shaping, and habituation.

The method has been designed to combine a maximal reliability of elephants at work with well-being of the elephants and safety of staff. This is achieved through a detailed understanding of an elephant’s brain functions related to learning.

Benefits to Reliability and Safety

Increased safety of staff is one of the method’s major benefits to elephant owners and handlers. As there is no pain inflicted on the elephants, the result is considerably less aggression in the elephants towards humans, which can save lives especially during the musth or arousal period of male elephants. Additionally, as the training method effectively prevents unnecessary confrontations and panic situations, accidents during training and handling that can result in injury of death of staff become rare.

There are several reasons why inflicting pain ont he elephants becomes unnecessary when using the Positive Learning Method. One of them is the detailed attention that is paid on the clarity and timing of the signals the trainer gives to the elephant. Another crucial element is an understanding on how to motivate the animal to perform each action and how to condition the animal to follow each command in any circumstances. With these skills, the trainer can control the elephant without inflicting pain. The elephant also learns faster compared to traditionally trained elephants, and carries out its tasks with reliability and precision.

Benefits to Elephant Well-Being and Health

An obvious benefit to the elephants themselves is the lack of pain, fear, and injuries during training, but there is also a long-term health benefit to gain from Positive Learning. Getting trained and handled in a consistent and pain-free way reduces the chronic stress of elephants as compared to those that are trained traditionally or handled with unnecessary force. Such a reduction in stress is not only a plus in well-being in itself, but it also improves the functioning of the elephant’s immune system and thus improves its chances of staying in good health.

From the perspective of a veterinarian, the elephants become easier to handle during routine procedures such as taking blood samples. An additional benefit is that elephants can be trained to perform specific behaviour necessary in some aspects of health care, such as co-operating in the trunk wash technique that is a necessary part of sampling for a reliable tuberculosis test, which is difficult with traditionally trained elephants but relatively easy with the Positive Learning approach.

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Key Concepts of the Positive Learning Method

An Example: How to Train an Elephant to Be Ridden

How Does It Work?

Contrary to common belief, it is not necessary for an elephant to be afraid of his trainers and handlers in order to obey. If the trainer is skilled in the techniques of rewarding and pressure-release, the use of punishment and other forms of inflicting pain become unnecessary in training.

The key to animal training is getting the animal to form an association between hearing a specific word (or getting some other cue, like a touch of a rider’s foot) and performing a specific action. For example, a connection between hearing the word “baith” used by elephant trainers in Nepal, and sitting down. Repeating this often enough forms such a strong habit that it becomes a “second nature”: when the animal again hears the word, he automatically sits down without even considering any other options.

This basis is the same in all animal training methods, including both animal-friendly ones and those that use pain. What is different between methods is how the trainer makes the animal to perform the action in the first place, so that he can then start repeating it in order to form the association between the word and the action. In Positive Learning, techniques such as pressure-release, rewarding, and habituation are used in order to lead the animal to performing the necessary movements, which in turn lets the trainer to create connection in the elephant's mind between each action and the specific command word, after which the performance is further rehearsed to precision.

Rewarding and pressure-release are two ways of motivating an animal to perform a specific action, and habituation is a way to make animal behave calmly with new and potentially scary things by introducing them gradually. For more details of these techniques, please see the illustrated middle and right-hand columns on this page.

The Difference to Punishing

In scientific terms, rewarding is called positive reinforcement, as the correct action is enforced by giving something nice, and pressure-release is called negative reinforcement, as the correct action is rewarded by removing something unpleasant. The term negative reinforcement is sometimes confused with punishment, but there is an important difference. Negative reinforcement is rewarding: at the moment when an animal performs a correct action, the trainer releases a slightly irritating touch, thus resulting in a comfortable feeling. Punishment is inflicting pain as a reaction to an animal's action (or, as often is the case, as a reaction to the fact that the animal does not understand what the trainer wants), resulting in fear and stress.

The calmness of elephants trained with WEPA's Positive Learning Method makes the training a safer for trainers and elephants alike. In the photo above, senior staff member Rajendra Panwar (on the right) and mahout Rajbir Chaudhary (on the elephant) are training a young elephant at the Elephant Breeding Centre of Chitwan, Nepal during a WEPA workshop.

Science and Experience Combined

The Positive Learning Method has been developed for WEPA by Dr. Andrew McLean, a scientist specializing in animal learning, in co-operation with elephant trainer Laurie Pond. Some additional aspects have been contributed by other trainers, such as Tuire Kaimio. The method continues to be developed further, and the details can be tailored to fit the specific needs of different environments and different types of tasks the elephants need to learn.

WEPA is not the first to introduce elephant-friendly training and handling, however. There are some individual elephant trainers with excellent elephant-friendly skills in various parts of Asia, as well as in well-managed zoos in different corners of the world. What WEPA can contribute in addition to this is the scientific basis, which makes it possible to maximize both the reliability and the well-being of elephants at the same time.