The rainstorm and the river are my brothers

[austin_dern]

The little headline box over the Channel i news anchor's shoulder, reporting on current events in Iraq, asked the question, ``America's `Vietnam'?''

An absurd question, of course. Iraq is America's new Philippine Insurrection.

But since that's a depressing topic I'll go to more of my zoo pictures, this time things taken from the sea lion exhibit. The trainers explain they employ only positive reinforcement, and so never train sea lions to do things they don't do in the wild. This leaves the question, first brought to my attention by Robert Benchley, of when in the wild they need to balance beach balls on their noses. One may also wonder when they need to do Michael Jackson-esque Moonwalks, but I can imagine circumstances in which they need to stand up. I guess.

Kissing, of course, is a natural activity I'm sure they need to do plenty in the course of their sea lion obligations. And there's the need to leap out of the water at a ball on a stick in synchronized porpoise imitations. It's all in good fun, though.

As a sea lion show they naturally showed off an otter, sponsored by Nokia. Helena the Asian short-clawed otter was brought out to warn of the dangers of polluting the oceans. She therefore showed her ability to pick up empty bottles which the trainer scattered around. yellow3 proclaimed Helena's picking up of an empty can of green tea to be the cutest picture ever, though that faces some stiff competition. yellow3 also asked how otters can be trained to do anything, as ``they're like ADD elementals.'' She tried to revise that to ``ADD incarnate,'' but I like the first description better. The trainer did have to remind Helena after every bottle that there were more.

Otters picking up trash is an adorable feat, of course. As to how to train otters, I don't know; all I have is that comment about ``positive reinforcement.'' And it does force one to conclude that the polluting of the oceans wouldn't be a problem if the otters would just put down the fish now and then and clean the place up themselves. The show probably didn't want to leave that impression.

Trivia: Detroit is the only United States city surrendered (after independence, and not counting cities in the Philippines or other Pacific island holdings) to another power. Source: The Wars of America, Robert Leckie.

Currently Reading: Anti-Ice, Stephen Baxter.

Comments

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the pictures!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm happy to post them. I still haven't gotten to the main otter exhibit or the raccoons, and at that I barely got to much of the zoo last weekend. They do pretty well at getting photogenic arrays of animals.

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

You're right that the Phillipines Insurrection is a much closer match to the current situation than Vietnam. I was beginning to think I was the only one who noticed what a "splendid little war" we just had. It's still not that close of a comparison in root causes, though. I think it's a little closer to an accelerated version of Spanish-American War -> Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba.

Otter training's fun. It has easy and hard aspects. What makes it easy is that otters are extremely smart; and very easy to motivate with food because they're always hungry, and with affection because they enjoy it. The hardest part is that they have a limited attention span, and have the typical wildlife trait of spooking easily when things are new or different. They can also get aggressive if they're frustrated to the point they think you're just teasing them with the food.

Most training starts with conditioning the animals (otters or otherwise) to associate actions with rewards. Once you cross that bridge, you can start training something simple: almost always a "target" command. Put your nose on this spot when I call, and you get a reward. Then you can gradually do things like extend the length of time they have to keep contact with the spot, or move the target spot so they have to follow to get the reward. Or change the spot to your hand, or some stage prop, or change the touch to a grab. For zoos that don't do shows, we train the otters to allow various helpful procedures, like moving to different areas to be fed, stepping on a scale, stepping into a kennel crate, sitting still while being poked with a needle-less syringe (once or twice a year it'll sting, but usually sitting there for it just means food!)

For example, training an otter to go on a scale starts as training the otter on a target, then training both "follow a moving target", and "sit still by a stationary target until told to move again". Then you combine the behaviors: having the otter follow the target, then stop and hold when it stops. Next you make the target cross the scale at some point before it stops, and only reward the otter when it follows correctly, over the scale. Then you make the stopping point the scale, and change the verbal or hand signals to something new, like "scale". It won't take long before the otter knows that "scale" associates with that platform they're supposed to sit on. (This example would take maybe one to two weeks of 5-10 minute sessions per day, for an otter who's already target trained; you can't go much longer than 10 minutes with an otter, because they lose interest.)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

They're interesting points, thank you. I hadn't thought much about how otters might be trained, and really hadn't thought that it'd be useful to give them some training just to make ordinary zoo activities easier.

The raccoons at least have learned when their feeding times are; they're noticeably more excited as their keeper gets closer, and if I were more organized I'd time my visits there with that in mind.