Some may find it strange to see video of a turtle in the marine mammal blog, but the marine mammal staff has the opportunity to train a sea turtle as well. The principals of operant conditioning and positive reinforcement can work with any animal, as long as you learn what it is that they find rewarding. Myrtle, a
green sea turtle, finds fish and
Brussels sprouts absolutely fabulous! Myrtle is
approximately 75 years old and has been at the aquarium almost as long as we've been open. We began by teaching Myrtle to "target" or touch a white PVC pipe, by putting it in front of her and rewarding her for touching it. From there, she learned to discriminate between a white pipe, a black pipe and a black and white striped pipe. She has been stellar at this, always choosing her white pipe when presented with a choice. Now we have moved on to sending her to search for her target around the tank. Her signal to start searching is a sound made by popping a smaller pole in the water and pulling it out. You can see me giving her the signal in this video:
Myrtle should hear the sound and then swim to her pole where another trainer will toss her a few pieces of fish or a prized Brussels sprout. Myrtle has proved very capable of this behavior and in this video you'll be able to see the finished behavior. Enjoy!
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Rochelle
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A few months ago I posted the first Turtle Training video featuring Myrtle, the giant ocean tank's resident green sea turtle. At the time, she was learning to swim away from the deck to find white target pole in another location. At the deck, she has long been able to distinguish her target from a plain black and a black /white striped pole. We wanted to know if she would continue to go to her target if there were other choices located around the tank. To find out, we placed long versions of the plain black and black white/striped around the tank too. In this video you can see how far along she has come with this behavior. You will be able to tell if she got the correct pole by seeing food being dropped in the water and the poles being taken out. Notice that she passes the other poles to get to her plain white target pole!