The History of Clicker Training

Since the 1950s, clicker training for animals has grown to be very popular with animal trainers across a broad spectrum of species, from dolphins to horses and of course dogs. The main reason for it's popularity is that clicker training is miraculously effective and it's humane, compared to earlier training methods.

Before the clicker training concept was developed, animals were trained primarily through a variety of negative and positive reinforcement tactics. In other words, an animal was often punished with pain, for not performing in a desired way. If an animal did the trick or performed the task to satisfaction, he was simply rewarded with food, praise or the absence of physical punishment.

This "punishment" method was adopted during World War II and at that time appeared to be the fastest way to teach animals to perform for the war effort. After the war ended, army trained "behaviorists" and animal trainers carried the practice over to civilian life.

However, when it came to training large sea animals like dolphins or killer whales, the technique was virtually impossible to perform. It was not possible or practical to punish a dolphin or killer whale swimming in a tank. Trainers needed to be able to "mark" a desired behavior, even when they couldn't reward the animal immediately.

Because large aquatic mammals often have a highly developed sense of hearing, using an auditory signal such as the clicker made sense, and the initial signal was a blast on a whistle. The whistle blast had earlier been paired with something the dolphin would value as a reward – a fish. So when the dolphin heard the whistle, not only would he know he'd done what his trainer wanted, but he also knew he would be rewarded with a fish. He would go on working through a number of behaviors, limited only by the inventiveness of his mind, until he hit on the one which the trainer desired. This of course is a classic example of conditioning.

Undesired behaviors were not punished through physical abuse and were simply ignored. It was no longer about making them try new behaviors by applying negative reinforcement; but by working to determine what would get them the fish treat. Once they figured out the desired behavior, and performed it consistently, the trainer could pair a verbal command just before the behavior, so they'd know what was wanted at any given time. More complex behaviors could be broken down into small pieces and these later combined to get the whole "trick."

Once trainers of other species became aware of the benefits of positive reinforcement (rewarding only the desired behavior) and operant conditioning (pairing a signal with a reward so that the signal alone confirms the animal did what was wanted) this type of training began to spread.

One big change from the early marine mammal training is the type of signal used to affirm that the animal is doing the right thing and a reward is forthcoming. Clickers have come to replace whistles as the favored signal for non-marine mammals. The sound is novel, something the animal is unlikely to encounter in everyday life and yet it carries well so that a horse or dog can hear it even across a crowded park.