A seal paints to help with anger management!
Caius the Seal from the Kaliningrad Zoo was given a paintbrush and now paints, which stops him from being so aggressive towards other seals.
He turned out to be so good at it, that zoo director Svetlana Sokolova recently posted some of the seal's creations online. According to her, the staff is also helping to develop the animal's mental abilities with the help of this new task.
"We worked on eliminating stress in Caius to reduce/eliminate conflict behavior towards [another seal] Kil'ka (Eng. – Sprat). We came to the conclusion that if you train his cognitive functions, he becomes calmer and the aggression goes away," explains seal trainer Lolita Sidorenko.
Over the years of training, Caius has mastered many commands and it took a while to find something new to puzzle him with.
"He knows a lot of things now and we ran out of ideas in the veterinary direction. So, [keeper] Lida Avilova came up with something to load him up with – painting. And we hope that this will be enough for a long time!” notes the zoo director.
A waiting list of those wishing to buy Caius the Seal’s paintings has already formed in the comments to Svetlana Sokolova's posts.
