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Please note that what you see on this page is only a brief summary of the training principles of the Positive Learning Method. Similarly, the example given below is a simplified explanation of one of the training procedures. The actual protocol we use in training has more nuances to it. A more detailed written explanation of the training protocol is available on request for elephant trainers and others professionally involved with elephants.
1. Establishing Movements
Planning of the training starts by identifying the exact cues the elephant will need to know when fully trained and working. For example, in some cultures the cue for turning left will be a touch with a foot behind the elephant’s right ear.
In the Positive Learning Method, training a young elephant to know the cues starts with the trainers standing on the ground. One of the trainers touches the back of the elephant’s ear at exactly the same spot where the rider will later apply his foot. The touch can be very light, like a fly sitting on the ear. Though it is not painful, the elephant still would prefer not to have this fly-like touch there. The trainer stands there patiently, and if the elephant moves to any other direction than left, the trainer just keeps his hand there. The other trainer has some food treats ready, but he is not giving them to the elephant yet.
Sooner or later, after probably having done many other things first, the elephant happens to turn his head to the left a little bit. When this happens, the first trainer immediately takes his hand off the ear, and the other trainer immediately gives the elephant a piece of food.
Then the first trainer again puts his hand lightly behind the ear, and once the elephant again turns his head to the left, the hand is again removed and a piece of food given. After a few repetitions, the elephant knows that when you feel a touch of a hand behind your ear, you can get rid of it by turning your head left, and get a nice piece of food too. The removal of the hand is the pressure-release part of the training - the elephant learns that turning your head left leads to a release of pressure - and the food is the rewarding part. The training can be done without food too, based on pressure-release only, but the use of some food rewards in the beginning speeds up learning and makes the elephant more eager to co-operate.
Once the elephant knows that turning your head to the left is a solution to feeling a touch behind your ear, which it picks up quite quickly when the training is done correctly, the trainers start to expect him to turn a bit further before releasing the hand and giving the reward. When something that worked previously does not work any more, like turning your head just five centimetres to get rid of the touch did work a moment ago but doesn't work anymore, animals have a tendency to try the same thing more intensively. Thus, the elephant soon turns his head further to the left - and gets the result of pressure released and reward received. After this, the trainers continue expecting a longer and longer turn before releasing and rewarding, including the elephant taking first one step to the left, then two steps. Soon the elephant learns to keep turning to the left until the touch behind the ear is removed.
Other tactile cues for different ways of moving - turn right, walk forward, walk backwards, stop, etc. - are trained in the same way. The touch is always applied to the same spot on the elephant’s body in which a rider will later give the tactile cues, for example touching the back of both ears for walking forward.
For those movements for which a command word will later be used, the elephant is first trained to perform the action itself on a tactile cue. Once this works, the command word is added by starting to say it right before the tactile cue is given. This way the elephant will form an association between the word and the action, and the tactile cue can later be faded out.
2. Teaching Pressure Variations
Once the elephant knows the cues for walking to different directions, it is time to introduce the concept of walking faster. This, as well as other ways of controlling the intensity with which the elephant is performing each task, is done by teaching the elephant to respond to pressure variations.
The idea in pressure variations is that an increase in pressure, for example pressing a bit more with the hand or foot, results in a bigger response from the elephant, like increasing the speed of walking. As soon as the elephant has increased the speed, the pressure is again eased: the idea is not to keep annoying the elephant to make him keep walking fast, but just to train the elephant to interpret a brief increase in pressure as a signal for a change in speed, after which the elephant maintains the new speed until told otherwise.
In the photo below, this is being trained in connection to walking forward. The trainers are each applying a touch of a hand behind each ear of the elephant, at the same spots where a mahout’s feet will later be, and varying the intensity of touch.
When the trainers are precise in their timing, and know how to apply different kinds of pressures such as vibrating ones, they are able to control the elephant’s movements very accurately without needing to inflict any pain during the training.
3. Habituation to Rider
Once the elephant responds correctly to a range of tactile cues and vocal commands, it is time to introduce the concept of a person sitting on him. In traditional training systems, this is one of the dangerous stages: having someone suddenly sitting on you is a frightening experience for an elephant, and he tries to get rid of the rider by shaking violently. In Positive Learning, this problem is prevented by using a combination of habituation and rewarding.
At first, a trainer simply places a hand on the elephant, applying very light pressure for a moment in the place where the elephant will later feel the weight of the rider. Another trainer gives a piece of food at the precise moment when the hand is there.
Gradually, the hand is kept on the elephant for longer and longer times. The pressure applied is also gradually increased: from one to two hands, then also leaning on the elephant with more and more weight. The pieces of food are given only at those moments when the elephant feels the weight.
The gradually increasing feeling of weight is the habituation part of this training, and the food is the rewarding part. This works also without food, but the use of food rewards speeds up the process and keeps the elephant more motivated to stay in place.
As in any part of training, it is important to carefully observe the state of mind of the elephant. Only when the elephant is calm and comfortable, it is time to move on to applying more weight and for a longer time. If the elephant gets nervous, the trainers have proceeded too fast in adding weight and increasing the duration of it. The solution is to re-establish a calm mood of the elephant, while still keeping the hand on him until he stands immobile for a moment, and removing the hand only then. (Otherwise the elephant will learn that acting nervously is a way to get rid of something he doesn’t want, which would lead to problems later.) After this, the training is continued again, but making sure the weight and its duration are increased gradually enough so that the elephant remains calm.
Once the elephant has got used to a person heavily leaning on him, it is time for a rider to jump halfway up the elephant, and then come down.
Again, the elephant is rewarded with food for standing calmly still while feeling the weight of the person. This is repeated so that the person stays up there for a gradually longer and longer time.
Then a rider can climb onto the elephant and stay there, first for a short while and then gradually for longer and longer.
Once the elephant is thus used to accepting a person on him as an ordinary fact of life, the food rewards are not needed anymore.
When explained this way, the process may sound painstakingly slow. In reality, it only takes a few hours from the beginning to the end (including the frequent breaks in between training bouts) if the elephant has no previous bad experiences of riders. This is a lot faster compared to those training methods in which the rider suddenly climbs onto the elephant with no gradual habituation. In those methods, it usually takes several days before the elephant behaves calmly with a rider on - and before that the rider sometimes suffers serious injuries when the elephant shakes him off.
4. Re-establishing Movements with Rider
Once the elephant is used to having a rider on, it is time to start transferring the control of the elephant to the rider. At first, the same cues that the elephant previously learned from the trainers on the ground are rehearsed again. At this point, the elephant is still directed by the trainer on the ground, who still uses his hands to give the tactile cues, and the rider sits passively aboard. For example in the photo below, the trainer on the left is using his hand to give the elephant the tactile cue for walking backwards, touching the same spot that the rider will later touch with his heel for the same purpose.
5. Transferring Control to Rider
Once each of the previously learned cues have been successfully repeated for a few times in a row, thus establishing that the elephant is familiar with the idea that the cues still have the same meanings also in this new situation when someone is sitting on you, the role of giving the cues is gradually transferred to the rider.
At first, the rider gives a voice command, and immediately after this, a trainer on the ground applies the tactile signal to confirm to the elephant what it is that is expected. Once this works, the rider starts giving both the voice commands and the tactile ones. The trainer on the ground repeats the tactile cue only if the elephant does not respond to the rider.
6. Complete Control by Rider
Once the elephant responds to all the cues given by the rider, the trainer on the ground fades away.
This gradual transition from ground control to rider control increases the safety of training, since there are no abrupt changes from one situation to a totally different one, which could confuse the elephant. Many of the conflicts in traditional training methods that result in injuries in elephants or trainers are actually caused by the confusion of the elephant when he does not know what to do in a new or suddenly changed situation. When the trainer resorts to inflicting pain in order to punish or control the confused elephant, the elephant's panic added to the confusion sometimes results in serious consequences.
Again, the process may sound slow when explained in its component parts, but in reality the time it takes to reach the stage at which the elephant is in full control of the rider is considerably shorter compared to methods that are based on inflicting pain and using force to draw the elephant to the desired directions.
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