Keller and Marian Breland’s “IQ Zoo” B.F. Skinner’s students Keller and Marian Breland opened their animal training business in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1951. By the 1960s, the Brelands’ “IQ Zoo” was one of the most popular roadside attractions in the United States. Among its stars were basketball-playing raccoons, reindeer who operated a printing press, ducks who played the piano, and chickens who danced, walked a tightrope, and played tic-tac-toe. Beyond entertainment, the Brelands were pioneers in the development of animal training and behavior modification techniques. Marian Breland was one of the first psychologists to use positive reinforcement to teach basic self-help skills to people with developmental disabilities and also helped train marine mammals for the U.S. Navy (Bihm & others, 2010a, b).

Robert E. Bailey