Those who know me know I am a very keen trainer of cute, but apparently useless tricks. I have a sheep who fetches, parrots who do agility and play connect 4, ponies that go over obstacle courses and copy my leg movements so we can march in time, the dog that walks on balance beams, but all these tricks do have some underlying purpose behind them.
Some tricks help lay the groundwork for some really useful tricks. For example, a parrot pushing through a cloth tunnel gets her accustomed to being wrapped in a piece of fabric/towel like the vet may use to restrain them. The pony stepping onto a wooden platform gets used to stepping on a surface similar to a horse float. Even the sheep picking up a toy in his mouth gets him accustomed to an action like taking a syringe in his mouth so you can administer oral medication without having to restrain him.
And the more training you do, the more you and your animals develop a rapport for training and the easier it gets to teach new tricks. This can mean if you urgently need to teach them a new behaviour, it can be taught quicker than if the animal is not used to learning new tricks.
Even when the tricks don’t lead to any other behaviours, using added reinforcement to teach tricks to the animals in your care helps build trust between you. This means that in the event you need to do something the animal does not like, like medical care, the animal is more likely to tolerate it and forgive you.
This rapport also means they are more likely to respond when you need to ask them to do something else, like come when called instead of rolling in the smelly, dead cane toad they have found!
Besides that, teaching cute tricks can be tons of fun!
What’s your favourite cute trick that has a hidden benefit?