Animal training is the act of teaching animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli. Training may be for purposes such as companionship, detection, protection, and entertainment. The type of training an animal receives will vary depending on the training method used, and the purpose for training the animal. For example, a seeing eye dog will be trained to achieve a different goal than a wild animal in a circus.
Early 20th century animal trainer Dolores Vallecita with a leopard.
The Ursar by Theodor Aman, depicting a trainer with a muzzled bear
Morphy, an orangutan with his toy, a horse, on a walk with his keeper in a traveling circus.
A trained dog competing in dog agility.
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or extinction.
B.F. Skinner at the Harvard Psychology Department, circa 1950