Recently, scientists have discovered that fish use tools. Scientists use to think that only humans could use tools. Then, field researchers discovered that chimps and other apes could use tools too. As we learn more about animal behavior, other birds and mammals are continually being added to the list of species that use tools. I guess humans aren’t that unique after all!

Check out the video clip below, which shows an Orange-Dotted Tuskfish who carries a clam shell across the ocean, picks out a really big rock, then throws the shell repeatedly against the rock to break it open. (Most of the throwing starts at about 1:30). You can read more about the video and the scientist who took the video clip here.

On Youtube: Orange-Dotted Tuskfish Uses Tool

I had a lot of surprised friends several years ago when I did some clicker training and trick training with my goldfish Blaze. Many species are much more capable of learning than we give them credit for. A woman named Barbara Ray recently posted on one of the discussion groups I am on (the Click-L_ABAT list) about her experiences training urchins and sea stars. Using operant conditioning principles, which are the same principles that form the foundation for clicker training, even urchins and sea stars can be trained! I ask her if I could republish her post on my blog and she said that would be okay.

It amazes me, though, that so many people doubt that many species are not capable of learning. How else would the species survive in a changing environment? Barbara does a great job explaining how training principles can be applied to some species that are usually considered unlikely candidates for training.

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Originally posted on click-L_ABAT on June 6, 2001.

I worked with seastars and urchins and various shellfish for many years, conditioning them to come and to station etc. These animals use various sensory organs to detect potential food and potential threats in their already very violent environments to which they are adapted (Reef habitats). So while we talk about them having no brains, theoretically one could say their body IS their brain, as the ganglia are spread out in a ring in the main body and branch out the arms etc.

What became hugely apparent and intriguing, from a behavioral evolution standpoint, is the different “urchinalities” the animals showed to the same sets of stimuli.

When transferred to a different holding tank, for example, there were urchins who became stressed and responded with the typical spines drooped as in detecting a threat (and possibly ‘change in tide” where they had to brace themselves and stop foraging activity if in the wild setting), there were urchins who took advantage of the ‘new’ environment to start exploring and identify potential new food source, and those that remained neutral to the same behavior or position prior to transfer.

When conditioning the animals to come, I used a light as a marker instead of a clicker, as they are very sensitive to light and dark cues and pay little attention to noise. Certain “tactile noise” (vibrational wavelengths) can elicit a defensive response, but I was not looking to scare them, I wanted to engage them. Most urchins and stars learned VERY quickly to come to station for a tidbit of shrimp (one of their favorite foods).

So millions of years of adaptation has afforded these animals to some very clever behavior to meet their needs, even though they lack a formal brain! (Same with plants of course, who also have their own behavioral evolutionary paths determined by the environments to which they must adapt or perish.)

Perhaps just the brain itself is not actually where the answers lie to explain the origin of some behavior or responses. Maybe there is other sensory input which is critically important but we focus so much on the brain, the other gets lost.

How else to explain how the brainless animals then also condition up in what appears to be so similar to animals with brains? Their physiology affords them chemical and photo receptors and tactile, EM receptors etc and some senses we probably have not completely identified but suspect exist.

To teach the ‘come when called’ response, for instance, that was done by shaping and luring. Using a touch on the animal’s spine or tentacle to get it’s ‘attention’ and luring with a piece of food. gradually raising criteria from moving the body to moving distance over time…so the animal eventually had to move from point A to B, such as coming from the bottom of the tank to a station at the side or top, to earn the shrimp reinforcement.

Fading the lure quickly was no problem, as again, these animals are adapted to an environment that very violently shifts from high tide to low twice a day, so their response to come for the reinforcement was quick with the cue, and no reinforcement present. Or I should say, none directly in their tanks! I have no doubt they can detect the food bits in the room from the ambient molecules that then enter the water through surface contact, drift and wave movement.

They had good ‘memory’ for the cue even after as long as 12 month ‘break’ without being in the training program.

The saltwater hermit crabs of course, with brains, were much more “fun,” as they could learn mugging behaviors and to demand attention (by tapping on the side of the tank with their foreclaws or one even learned to slug his shell on the tank wall as the sound was louder and more likely to get the human’s attention) when they wanted to be worked with/reinforced or saw their keepers and learned that by ‘asking’ for attention they could train the trainers to attend to them!

Its hard to resist a sweet-faced crab banging on the tank and looking at you directly with those big black pleading eyestalks, wondering why you are being so slow forthcoming with his shrimp!

Barbara and The Symphony of Hounds

I’ve been busy busy busy the past several weeks. This semester I officially started the Master’s program in behavior analysis at the University of North Texas. Classes are great so far, but I’m having to get back in the swing of going to classes and getting all of my work and reading done. I hope to post more in the coming weeks about some of what I’m learning.

Blaze my awesome little goldfish died at the end of August. He taught me a lot about training and about the intelligence of fish in the almost two years I had him.

There’s an empty spot in my room now and I decided I wanted to fill it this time with some furry that could come out of it’s cage for training sessions. My birthday’s tomorrow, so…my mother and brother bought me two baby rats! (My father is still getting use to the idea of having rats in the house.)

They are both little baby girls and are quite cute! I got them over the weekend and they are starting to settle in. Neither has a name yet, so I would LOVE some name suggestions!

The gray one is VERY outgoing and curious. If I open the top of the cage she immediately runs up and peaks her head out, wanting to be picked up. She also moves at about a mile a minute! The cream and white one is still pretty shy. She is friendly when I get her our but still isn’t completely sure about seeking interaction.

Of course, they will be clicker trained! : )
I’m planning on giving them a bit of time at the beginning to settle in and get use to me and their new environment. The rats are also going to have their own training blog, but I’m still working on getting it up and running.

Please leave a comment with name suggestions AND with any tricks you want to see the rats learn!

Recently, I’ve began trying to teach him some new behaviors using shaping. This is good practice for me and will allow me to train him to do a wide range of behaviors. I wrote about the beginnings of my fish clicker training experiences here, including conditioning my marker signal.

We don’t train every day, but we’ve made quite a bit of progress over the past month or so. I’ve been shaping him to swim under the bridge in his tank using a penlight as my marker signal, or “click.”

Here are the successive steps I rewarded in our shaping plan:
1) Swimming all around the tank (to encourage movement, rather than him staying just on the right side).
2) Swimming only in the middle third of the tank.
3) Swimming only in the front half and bottom half of the middle third of the tank.
4) Swimming in front of the bridge.
5) Swimming in front of the middle opening of the bridge.
6) Entering the bridge.

He now readily swims towards the bridge and then under the opening in exchange for a food pellet. Here’s where we are currently:

Click HERE to watch the video on youtube

Interestingly, now that he’s swimming all the way under the bridge, I’m running into difficulties. For the “click,” I think he is orienting to both the flash of the light AND the movement of the wand. (Or, just completely ignoring the light and watching my hand movements). In any case, this discussion will be saved for another post, as I’m still trying to figure out exactly what’s going on. I might need to revisit my first two clicker training goals…

I started experimenting some with fish training last Spring with my goldfish Blaze. We worked on some basic tricks using the R2 fish training kit, such as following a target, swimming through a narrow hoop and swimming through tunnels. I even made a short video of Blaze doing some tricks. All of our early tricks were taught using luring–Blaze was going where I wanted him to because he was interested in following the feeding wand, which was full of food. I got distracted by other projects and then was gone all of the summer, so I have not done much fish training since March.

Now, this past week, fish training has resumed. I am primarily interested in training some tricks using the principles of shaping. Training with shaping creates a different mindset for the animal than training with luring. Animals that are familiar with shaping are more confident in their behavior, more eager to offer new behavior, and aren’t as likely to get stuck if they don’t understand. As well, great shaping skills make a great trainer and this is one area where I want to keep practicing and improving. So, Blaze got volunteered to help me practice my shaping skills.

The first task, for any good clicker training should be the following two goals:
1) The animal clearly understands that the click means “Yes, that was right! Here comes some food!”
2) The animal understands how to get the food and does so quickly and efficiently.

The second goal is the downfall of many an otherwise good trainer. If there are holes in your food delivery process your training will progress slower and you’ll often end up with a frustrated animal. The animal should understand exactly how and where food is delivered and should go get the food and then immediately move on to the next response. Breakdown in the food delivery process is the trainer’s fault–the trainer hasn’t properly taught the animal the rules surrounding the food delivery process or is slow and clumsy with food delivery.

So, our first goal was effective food delivery. I started out getting Blaze use to the feeding wand again and practicing quickly and accurately delivering the food and reloading the wand. I use floating pellets as reinforcers, but I have to soak them to just the right amount before I can start training. Too little soaking and they float immediately to the top, which makes it harder for Blaze to follow them, too much soaking and they begin to fall apart.

Once our food delivery was going well, I added in my fish “clicker.” A clicker, or marker signal, doesn’t have to be a little metal box clicker. It could be a bell, a spoken word, a flashing light, or almost anything else. The key is to pick something that is distinct, short in duration, unique, and easy for the animal to recognize. For Blaze, I use a penlight that has a white light.

Now I am working on getting Blaze to associate the flash of the light with the presentation of the feeding wand. I think that he’s starting to understand at least something about the flashing light. When I was feeding from the wand the first couple of days, I was always doing it in the front right part of the tank. Once Blaze figured this out, he stayed almost exclusively in this area. Now that I have introduced the light, I have been feeding in the same part of the tank, but I have been clicking the light when he has been in the middle and at the other end of the tank. Today, he was swimming all over the tank during the session, rather than hovering around near the feeding spot.

Whether he understand the click well enough for me to be able to shape behavior, I don’t know. So, my next task is to try and shape or capture a simple behavior. I think I’m going to start by training him to go under the middle of the bridge. This is something he occasionally does, so I know he’s capable of doing it and isn’t afraid or hesitant to do it. Since he can do it, the real question is, can I teach him that swimming under the bridge is what earns him his food reward?

As with any good shaping plan, it’s best to start with small approximations and work slowly to your final goal. So, for now, I’m clicking when he is in the middle region of the tank where the bridge is. I’m also only trying to click if he’s more towards the bottom third of the tank. I’m not sure how long this will take, but I’ll keep you updated as to how our shaping goes!

The folks at the New England Aquarium are taking this task seriously, and they’ve been training all sorts of behaviors to some of the most unlikely species! They’ve recently been working on target training with some of their lobsters.

Here’s a video, the quality of the video isn’t great, but it’s easy to see that the lobster is already understanding that it should approach the target after just a few training sessions! I’ve talked in the past about some of the benefits of target training, it’s a great first behavior to work on and can be expanded later to help train other behaviors.

You can read more about this and other animals on the aquarium’s blog.

You can watch the video here.

You can also read more here and here about how she put the behavior on cue. She uses different symbols on an ipod screen to cue for each bell. This works well, since fish are pretty visual and can see the ipod screen if it is held up to the glass. Since each bell has a separate cue, she can tell the fish when to play each bell.

Blaze isn’t nearly that trained yet! We haven’t done much training over the past month or so, as I’ve been busy with school, the horses and training the dog. Hopefully we’ll have time to work on a few more tricks before I head off for camp this summer.

Blaze, the fish I’m training, is also a common goldfish. Hopefully, he’ll be able to do all these tricks one day!

A signal, such as the clicker often used with dogs or the whistles often used with dolphins, is actually much more effective than using just praise and food. This is because the click/whistle is very easy for the animal to hear and understand, it’s exactly the same signal every time and, perhaps most importantly, the timing is much more precise in terms of being able to mark exactly what behavior you want. The animal then knows exactly what behavior earns the reward.

I’ve been training Blaze (my goldfish) for close to 2 weeks now. He’s made fast progress so far, although I’ve been teaching him using targeting with a training wand and luring. He’s learned how to follow the training wand through a hoop, but I’m not sure he actually understands that “go through hoop” earns the reward, as oppose to “follow the wand even when the wand goes through the hoop.” Which are nearly the same behaviors, but not quite. He might understand that the hoop is some how connected to the reward, as he has offered the behavior several times without me asking for it. However, I’ve been teaching him to swim through it in one direction, and almost every time he’s offered the behavior it’s been in the other direction, which makes me think that he’s just gotten comfortable with swimming through the hoop.

So, I want to add some sort of marker signal so that I can precisely mark the behavior I want and begin to shape more complicated behaviors. However, being a fish, he doesn’t respond very well to verbal or auditory signals, such as a clicker or praise. As many times as I say “Good Fish! Good Fish! Great job fishy!,” he’s probably not going to equate my praise with his food. Instead, I’ve started using a penlight. It’s easy to click the penlight and flash a bit of light at the fish tank. Then, I give him a bite of food. Click and a flash of light, then food follows. Click and a flash of light, then food follows. We’ll repeat this for several sessions, until, hopefully, he figures out that the flash of light means “Good fishy, here comes a bit of food!”