In this live episode of YOU be the Behavior Consultant, I dig into a skill that quietly drives almost every good intervention: clearly identifying appetitive and aversive stimuli (and the stimulus conditions around them). I share the definitions we developed for the EAZA Animal Training Guidelines—appetitive can be food, enrichment, activities, sensory experiences, and social contact, especially when we don’t yet know if it will function as a reinforcer. Aversive stimuli are identified by what the animal does—withdrawal, escape, avoidance, alerting, tension, freezing, and other species-specific signals—and I remind you that “aversive” doesn’t automatically mean pain, fear, or coercion. This matters because if we stay too broad (“he likes it” or “she hates it”), we miss the nuances that power nonlinear contingency analysis, superimposition, and identifying critical consequences. I walk through real consulting examples: a tortoise that didn’t “care about food” but was highly motivated by novel environments; a jaguar that slowed down shifting because play and activity competed strongly with the night shift routine; and an elephant bath session where negative reinforcement procedures (distance and control over exposure) helped create participation. I also show what aversive conditions can look like in practice—from a more intense gate-related concern to subtle hand-avoidance in fennec fox grooming work—so you can design cleaner, more effective training plans built on what the animal is actually telling you.