I.Q. Zoo

Keller B. Breland of Hot Springs, Ark. is a psychologist who applies modern scientific methods to training and understanding animals. The traditional training methods, he believes, are mostly wrong. Punishment and threats work only with such relatively "stupid" animals as horses. Praise is no good except with dogs. For most animals, the best system is an immediate reward of food, given for an action repeated over and over. Even bird-brained chickens and harebrained rabbits can be deeply conditioned by often-repeated rewards.

In 1947 Breland was personnel manager of Streater Industries outside Minneapolis, where he used his psychology on human subjects. He got interested in training animals by psychological methods, and was so successful with hamsters, pigeons, chickens and other unpromising trainees that he found he could sell them, when educated, to General Mills Inc. for use in advertising stunts. In 1947 he quit his human psychology job, and in 1950 he and his wife Marian moved to a farm in Arkansas, where they set up an animal school that has turned out more than 5,000 psychologically educated graduates.

The Dancing Goat. Among the most successful alumni of Breland's university are his "Caseys at the Bat" (hens that play baseball). It takes a very short time, he says, for a hen to learn that when she tugs at a rubber ring, an electrically operated bat will knock a small ball toward a wire-screen outfield and a few grains of wheat will fall into a trough. So the hen pulls the ring, and then runs madly for "first base'' (the trough). If the ball is intercepted by mechanical "defensive players," she knows by experience that she will have to try again, so she hurries back to home plate with visible annoyance and gives the bat another swing.

This performance, which looks intelligent, does not strain the brain of even the flightiest hen. If properly conditioned, she will go through her act in a department-store window, unconscious of traffic noise or applauding spectators. The only thing that matters to her is the reward, and she has been taught what she has to do to get it.

Breland's chickens also count, play poker, shoot popguns and walk on tightropes. Trained in similar mechanical ways are ducks and geese that beat on drums, hamsters that swing on trapezes, goats that dance and highjump, rabbits that kiss each other, pigs that clean up a cluttered room. There seems to be no limit to the tricks that mechanical reward devices can teach to almost any animal. "All we have to do," says Breland, "is to keep the act within the known limitations of the given species."

The Social Dog. Breland thinks that pigs are the most intelligent animals that he has trained. Raccoons, dogs and cats also come high on the list, while horses and cows rank low. But each animal, he says, must be trained in accordance with its peculiar nature. Dogs are not at all typical. By nature they are social animals, living in groups with a rigid code of behavior. They therefore respond to man's praise and affection. Cats do not. They like to be petted, says Breland, but their enjoyment is merely physical. They will do nothing for praise. Most other animals are equally selfish; the dog is about the only one that takes man into his family.

The most talented animals trained by the Brelands are on exhibition in their "I.Q. Zoo," a tourist attraction at Hot Springs, and 250 of them are on the road for General Mills. They draw attention to General Mills' exhibits at agricultural fairs and of course always pick G.M. products as their favorite foods. The Brelands enjoy their commercial success, but they regard it as a pleasant way to pay for expensive research. Their leading interest is still animal psychology, and they are sure that they have learned enough already to help farmers control their animals. Example: a farmer should always be noisy in the turkey pen so that the turkeys will get used to noise and will not stampede and kill themselves during a thunderstorm.

Another Breland project is to reform U.S. zoos. Breland believes that zoo animals should be trained to perform instinctive acts when given a triggering signal. In a Breland-type zoo, the spectator could put a nickel in a slot if he wanted to see the monkeys dance or the hippo plunge into his pool. For a larger coin, a quarter perhaps, he might see a lion charge out of a thicket and leap with hideous roars on a simulated gazelle.

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