Word: breland
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...which go by mail to paid subscribers, including Actor Jack Palance and Society Columnist Cobina Wright (no alumni). Inside the walls they are consumed with the avidity of men who have nothing but time on their hands. "The Atlantian must be well received," says Associate Warden Virgil Breland at Atlanta. "We don't find the commodes jammed up with torn copies...
...Dancing Goat. Among the most successful alumni of Breland's university are his "Caseys at the Bat" (hens that play baseball). It takes a very short time, he says, for a hen to learn that when she tugs at a rubber ring, an electrically operated bat will knock a small ball toward a wire-screen outfield and a few grains of wheat will fall into a trough. So the hen pulls the ring, and then runs madly for "first base'' (the trough). If the ball is intercepted by mechanical "defensive players," she knows by experience that...
...Breland's chickens also count, play poker, shoot popguns and walk on tightropes. Trained in similar mechanical ways are ducks and geese that beat on drums, hamsters that swing on trapezes, goats that dance and highjump, rabbits that kiss each other, pigs that clean up a cluttered room. There seems to be no limit to the tricks that mechanical reward devices can teach to almost any animal. "All we have to do," says Breland, "is to keep the act within the known limitations of the given species...
...Social Dog. Breland thinks that pigs are the most intelligent animals that he has trained. Raccoons, dogs and cats also come high on the list, while horses and cows rank low. But each animal, he says, must be trained in accordance with its peculiar nature. Dogs are not at all typical. By nature they are social animals, living in groups with a rigid code of behavior. They therefore respond to man's praise and affection. Cats do not. They like to be petted, says Breland, but their enjoyment is merely physical. They will do nothing for praise. Most other...
...Another Breland project is to reform U.S. zoos. Breland believes that zoo animals should be trained to perform instinctive acts when given a triggering signal. In a Breland-type zoo, the spectator could put a nickel in a slot if he wanted to see the monkeys dance or the hippo plunge into his pool. For a larger coin, a quarter perhaps, he might see a lion charge out of a thicket and leap with hideous roars on a simulated gazelle...