Karen Pryor

Karen Pryor

Karen Pryor is a behavioral biologist with an international reputation in two fields, marine mammal biology and behavioral psychology. Karen was a founder of Hawaii’s Sea Life Park, where her work with dolphins pioneered modern, force-free animal training methods. She is the author of Don’t Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training, a Bantam bestseller on teaching behavior without coercion, and of Nursing Your Baby, a classic guide for mothers with sales of over 2 million copies. She is also the author of several clicker-training manuals and many scientific papers and popular articles on learning and behavior. Karen Pryor’s newest book is Reaching the Animal Mind: what the clicker training method teaches us about all animals, Scribner and Simon & Schuster 2009.

Karen Pryor is a founder and leading proponent of clicker training, a training system based on operant conditioning and the all-positive methods developed by marine mammal trainers. Clicker training is now in use world wide with dogs, cats, horses, birds, animals in zoos. A related technology, TAGteaching (Teaching with Acoustical Guidance) is used in the teaching of human skills, ranging from sports, music, and language skills to education and special needs children.

Pryor’s business background includes co-founding Sea Life Park, the Oceanic Institute, and related commercial enterprises in Hawaii. She has consulted to industry, government agencies, autism schools, and non-profit organizations from 1972 to the present. She is founder and CEO of an information technology company, KPCT/Sunshine Books, Inc., and is active in publishing and product development, and the hosting of ClickerExpo, a yearly series of conferences on operant training. Pryor and her company have also developed an international trainer-teaching program, Karen Pryor Academy, with over 200 certified graduates in the US. Karen Pryor served as federal Commissioner, a presidential appointment, on the Marine Mammal Commission, and presently sits on the boards of the Pryor Foundation and the B.F. Skinner Foundation and the Advisory Board of the American Humane Association.

For more information about Karen Pryor and clicker training go to www.clickertraining.com, www.tagteach.com, and www.reachingtheanimalmind.com.

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