Pinning Your Primates
What is pinning?
Pinning is used as a disciplinary tool or a way to show your primate that you are the dominant individual.
How is pinning with primates done?
From what I have seen so far, the animal is held in such a way that renders them largely immobile (usually with a hand around their neck), unable to bite or retaliate in any other fashion. This often includes yelling at the animal or talking to them in a stern voice for the duration of being held immobile.
Why is pinning done with primates?
Pinning is mostly used as punishment (positive punishment = add something to reduce a behavior) for an undesirable behavior like biting. The goal is to eliminate the undesirable behavior, reduce the primate’s perceived ‘dominance’, or both.
What are the risks of pinning your primate?
Pinning your primate is not a magic fix for eliminating problem behaviors. If you are not harsh enough with your animal or don’t maintain your hold on them long enough, you risk increased aggression in the moment, and serious injury to yourself or others around you.
If you are too harsh, you risk injuring your pet or severely damaging your relationship with them.
Using aversive methods such as pinning can also cause increased anxiety and increased aggression towards other individuals in other situations outside of the incident. For example, in the moment, your pet may submit and seem like they’ve “learned their lesson” but then begin attacking other people who come over to visit. (click here for a study on the effects of punishment based training in dogs)
Should I use pinning with my primates?
I do not recommend pinning your primate unless you are in an emergency situation that poses an immediate threat to you, your primate, or another individual and your animal needs to be restrained to avoid injury or death to either themselves or someone else.
Many people believe that their pets should obey them without question. If the animal is not doing what they want or expect, then the animal is at fault. This mindset is the thought process that produces solutions like pinning.
However, this is a completely unrealistic expectation, even for domestic pets. Primates are wild animals and not meant to be pets. Unlike dogs, They do not have the benefit of being bred by humans for hundreds of years specifically to live and work with us. On the contrary, once they reach adulthood, they have very real, species-specific needs and a behavioral repertoire that doesn’t always fit a human’s idea of what’s appropriate in a pet.
When I take on a behavior case, I’m looking at the animal’s environment. How the animal is housed, fed, what kind of enrichment is provided, if the animal has companionship, and how the animal is treated in general. I’m looking at what might be causing or contributing to the problem behavior. I work with my clients to set realistic goals and create a plan to resolve what they see as problem behaviors. Sometimes these solutions are compromises instead of “quick fixes” like pinning.
Ultimately the decision to pin your primate or not boils down to what you want your relationship with your animal to look like. If you just want your animal to let you do whatever you want to it whenever you want without protest, or behave exactly as you want without question, then pinning may appeal to you, but keep in mind that though you may get the illusion of results in the moment, your more likely to end up with an unpredictable, dangerous animal in the long run.
If, however, you want a relationship with your pet in which they’re allowed to be who they are and you’re willing to respect them as the wild animals that they are, then pinning is probably not for you.
If you’d like to learn more about other ways to resolve problem behaviors with your primates, instead of pinning, contact me for a free consultation and I will help you come up with a better behavior change plan for your primate.