Clean Run - January 2013 - 44

If you build it... they can run!

that we had no intention of teaching them. The animal is learning whether you are trying to train or not during a particular interaction. It is essential to avoid accidentally reinforcing unwanted behavior. In one zoo, vocalizing by the big cats was reinforced. Trainers certainly weren’t trying to increase the frequency of vocalizing, but that’s what they did. They were feeding the big cats when they heard them vocalizing because trainers assumed that the cats were vocalizing when they were hungry. Because they cared about the animals, they wanted to alleviate that hunger. The animal decides what is reinforcing. Thinking creatively and beyond food is important. Some animals enjoy a good massage, a fun game of chase or tug. Some animals enjoy resting in a sun spot, a light mist of water, swimming with a favorite toy or friend. Heat can be a great source of reinforcement for a penguin that needs to thermoregulate or a snake that is learning to be comfortable with handling. Knowing your animal as both an individual and as a member of a species is critical for effective training. It’s a common activity in ethology classes to have students find honeybee food sources by observing the dance of the honeybees, which encodes information about the distance and direction to food. Bees must be trained to come to sugar water in a particular spot for this exercise, which requires patience (like all training) and an understanding of honeybee behavior. Honeybees are seeking the most concentrated sources of sugar that they can find, so if a food source is not more sugary than flower nectar, they will not be interested. Additionally, honeybees use polarized light (which they can perceive but humans cannot) as a navigational tool. If it is overcast, polarized light is not visible to them, and they cannot learn the location of a new food source. Therefore, it is pointless to attempt to train them to a new food source on an overcast day. Cotton-top Tamarins are an arboreal species that find safety high in the rainforest canopy. They naturally go higher in the trees when frightened. Cuing a Tamarin to climb to a preferred high branch immediately after touching a target lower down in their exhibit near a scale they are learning to approach for weigh-ins can be an effective reinforcer. It’s easier to train animals to do what they want to do than to train them to do something that they are neutral or even inclined not to want to do. Capturing natural behavior and putting it on cue is easier than training an animal to perform a behavior that they are not inclined toward. Sea otters and dogs both easily learn to pick up objects, but it takes more effort to teach them to relinquish them on cue. Sea otters are inquisitive by nature. They use strong paws to find food items at the bottom of the sea floor, and to tear shellfish open. They are tool users, and will find and employ a favorite rock to help crack open the shells. An aquarium setting is no different. Sea otters will find all sorts of debris in their habitats. Under each fore© lauRa monaco toRelli © lauRa monaco toRelli

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Laura Monaco Torelli with a black bear.

Laura Monaco Torelli with a Blue & Gold Macaw at San Diego Zoo.
Clean Run | January 13

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Clean Run - January 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - January 2013