The link below is to one of the leading blogs on innovation, by Dave Pollard. In this posting he refers to a new book, Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild, by Susan McCarthy. The animal trainer mentioned in the excerpt is Karen Pryor, who finds that otters are too easily bored to be trained to do repetitive tricks….

From Dave Pollard’s blog: How to Save the World.

She tried to condition an otter to swim through a hoop. She put the hoop in the water, the otter swam through, and she gave it a fish. The otter swam through again, and she rewarded it again. Very good, but from the otter’s point of view already old news. The otter swam through the hoop, and stopped half way through. And looked up for a reward — no reward. It swam through the hoop, but as it was almost through, grabbed the hoop with its hind foot and pulled it away. And looked up for a reward — no reward. OK. The otter lay in the hoop, bit the hoop, backed through the hoop, each time checking to see if that rated a prize. "See?", said Pryor, "Otters are natural experimenters".