Debra L. Forthman, President of ABCS

I began my informal study of animal behavior as a toddler, focusing first on snakes, to the horror of adults. My first “formal” pet was a duckling, followed by a kitten. When we moved to a lake, I came home with frogs, turtles, birds, rodents and once, even leeches for pets. As with the snakes, I was ordered to return the leeches to where I had found them. When I was five, I decided I would live in Africa one day.

In high school veterinary medicine seemed the thing to do, so I volunteered at the local clinic that cared for our poodle. At that time I began to read about behavior and was inspired by Jane Goodall’s first book. I soon decided that I preferred behavior to medicine.

During my freshman year at Bucknell University, I was fascinated by a course in comparative psychology. After a year I transferred to the University of California at Riverside, where I began to study primates, both a colony of macaques on campus and island groups of chimpanzees at Lion Country Safari.

My childhood "decision" was fulfilled during my junior year when I left for Tanzania with one very large suitcase to live for a year and study baboons. During that year we walked with the baboons twelve hours per day, and encountered lions, leopards, elephants and Cape buffalo, the latter two on a daily basis. It was a wonderful and life-changing experience to study the animals and get to know the people.

I started graduate school at UCLA in 1977, working with the renegade psychologist John Garcia. In Garcia’s lab I learned a great deal about conditioned taste aversion (CTA). A CTA is what people and animals acquire when they eat something and then get sick some time later. Usually, they avoid the food in the future. While looking for a dissertation project and learning about environmental “enrichment” for captive wildlife, I heard about the "Pumphouse Gang", a group of baboons in Kenya long studied by anthropologist Shirley Strum. "Pumphouse Gang" was in trouble because they were raiding crops of farmers who had recently settled where the baboons lived. By chance, I was the only person at the time who knew about both applied CTA and baboons. I obtained a Fulbright fellowship and lived in Kenya for nearly two years, studying CTA first with baboons in a laboratory and then applying it to the wild baboons at Gilgil. While the project demonstrated that wild baboons could develop taste aversions for ordinary maize, the biochemical technology was not sufficiently advanced in 1982 to make widespread application feasible.

After receiving my PhD in 1984, I began training in zoo research at the Los Angeles Zoo. With support from grants, I worked there for two years, conducting studies to learn about and improve the lives of animals with which I was not familiar, such as chamois, California condors, bongos and sloth bears.

For another two years I worked on an application of taste aversion to coyotes on woolgrowers’ ranches in California, Arizona and Nevada. The project, funded by Congress and administered by the USDA, was cut short when the EPA (Enviromental Protection Agency) declined to issue us an experimental use permit for the chemical lithium chloride.

In late 1988, I joined the staff at Zoo Atlanta, where I started as an Applied Behavior Analyst. During that year I conducted a study on enrichment for bears in the zoo who still lived in traditional exhibits. The following year, I became Coordinator of Scientific Programs and an adjunct professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology. I supervised the scientific research on zoo grounds, most of which was conducted by graduate students of Dr. Terry Maple, director of Zoo Atlanta and a professor at Georgia Tech.

During my last five years at the zoo, I was given the task of developing a new department and became Director of Field Conservation. I was fortunate to supervise a small, talented staff that was involved in programs in the U.S., Central and South America, Asia and Africa. The Africa program was the largest, with a staff member working there full-time. It was a gratifying job. During the summers, Dr. Tara Stoinski and I led the Zoo Atlanta-Georgia Tech Field Course in Animal Behavior, a three-week intensive course for undergraduates held on safari in Kenya and South Africa.

When my job at the zoo ended in 2002, I worked as a pet consultant for a year with Dr. Melissa Shyan. After she relocated, and closed her business here, I started ABCS. It is exciting and challenging to be practicing the science and art of animal behavior research in yet another environment, that of the clinician in private practice. Because owners often say, “You are my last resort” before they take their animal to the shelter or have it euthanized, it is rewarding to be able to solve the problem and restore a harmonious relationship between the owner and the pet.

I have maintained ties to the captive wildlife community as a scientific advisor to and member of the working group of the Coalition for Captive Elephant Well-Being and to the academic community as a Senior Fellow in the Center for Conservation and Behavior in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech.

I believe that we are here to be of service to others. When that is combined with my life-long commitment to make life better for animals, running ABCS is the ideal job.

If you'd like to see my professional vita, describing in detail my education, work experience and publications, click here.