You may think….aaaaaw cute coati getting scratches. Oh, but it is so much more than that. This guy came to the zoo with an unknown history and had displayed a few undesired behaviors that no one wanted to see escalate. This meant the team wanted to add more structure to interactions. He liked scratches but didn’t really know how to request them politely. We very intentionally started with protected contact to introduce our back-scratching tool. The tool added distance and it turned out gave a more satisfying scratch than fingernails or other tools. We also wanted to teach scratches are delivered contingently. In other words, you can earn them for doing behaviors like targeting. You can see this boy is catching on and well on his way to learning stationing on his stump and targeting leads to a very lovely scratch. #ambassadoranimals #coatitraining #coatimunditraining #coati #coatimundi #educationanimals #educationanimal (at Santa Barbara Zoo) https://www.instagram.com/p/B66BIX3ldia/?igshid=6j81ph1a1p7o