12/8/08

#72: People Think We're Crazy

Recently we've taken on the challenge of trying to train many other animals at the Aquarium other than the seals. Many people believe you can train any animal to do anything that they are physically capable of doing. So we've been challenged to train lobsters, fish, frogs, turtles and even anacondas. I'm pretty sure co-workers from other departments think we're nuts. A bunch of us have been working with juvenile lobsters that were raised in the Aquarium's Lobster Lab.


If we are capable of training the lobsters to do certain behaviors and they are able to remember them, it may shed more light on crustacean brain power. One behavior some of us are attempting to train is to turn over on their back on a signal. These small lobsters sometimes do this on their own when being fed so our challenge is to get them to do it on cue. Watch this video to see what it looks like. Once the lobster flips I am reinforcing it with some brine shrimp from a dropper.



-Justin

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2 comments:

  1. Wow! How long will something like this take?

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  2. It can be done!

    I have angelfish at home that I'm teaching to swim through a hoop. I'm also reinforcing using a dropper filled with food.

    I'm having trouble finding a signal to cue the behaviour, rather than them just going through randomly.

    Good Luck!

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