behavior
Lessons from Exotics Lara Joseph explains how ring-tailed lemur pair Dill and Pickles landed at her training center and how working with exotics such as these helps her finesse her training skills
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always enjoy training and applying behavior analysis to the exotic and undomesticated animals I work with. Both these groups present me with plenty of variety as well as various levels of complexity I have to draw on and apply in order to put my skills to work. To explain exactly what I mean, I am going to talk about Dill and Pickles, two ring tailed lemurs I am currently working with. When I first met Dill and Pickles, I was walking by their exhibit during a professional zoo visit. At that moment, they were in the area of their enclosure that was closest to where I was walking. They followed me as I walked by, hanging onto the edge of the enclosure, so I made and kept eye contact. This could either have been reinforcing or aversive, I didn’t know at that point. As they kept following me, I identified that some thing was reinforcing their behavior, whether I desired it or not. As I didn’t yet know what it was, I continued the interaction to try to identify it. If I stopped walking, they would stay in the position closest to me. If I backed up along the edge of the enclosure, they would move in that di rection too, again staying closest to me. Before I went any further in potentially reinforcing an undesired be havior, I chose to offer them food reinforcers to see if they would accept them. Indeed they did, but cautiously. I identified this through their be havior, which included them not turning their backs on me, keeping eye contact, maintaining a leg and body posture ready for retreat, and hold ing their tails over their backs like squirrels. These were all observable and measurable behaviors that I could work on decreasing. In order to identify motivation, I began tossing food reinforcers into their enclosure and simply waiting to see what they did next. This turned out to be returning to the edge of the enclosure after they had jumped down to the ground to take the food. This provided me with more observ able and measurable behavior. I had no previous history with these two lemurs and a keeper wasn’t around for me to ask about their typical be havior, so I decided to approach, with care, and hand them food through the cage bars while making them reach for it during protective contact. They straight away began taking food from my hands and while they were doing so, I was able to observe the position of their ears, what they were looking at, the position of their bodies, and their vocalizations. The whole time I was identifying what these behaviors looked and sounded like while they were eating, between eating, and during my moving around the outside of the enclosure. What I saw and heard was motivation.
Target Training Via this protective contact, i.e. with the cage bars between us but Dill and Pickles being able to touch my hands with their mouths, I noticed
...training the multiple varieties of species the exotic world encompasses helps us fine-tune our application and understanding of the Laws of Behavior: What does that behavior mean? When does the behavior happen? When doesn’t it happen? Is this a positive reinforcer or an aversive and how do I find out? Am I actually using a negative reinforcer and, if so, how can I change my approach?
© Lara Joseph
Author Lara Joseph started her training plan with ringtailed lemurs Dill and Pickles by identifying positive reinforcers while observing behavior contingent on the immediate environment
they were taking food from my fingers gently, so I began moving my fin gers in closer proximity and, eventually, right through the cage bars. They continued to take the food gently from me, so I made the next move, which was to introduce a target stick. By having them focus on the target stick and eventually touching it with their noses, I began teaching them contingency, i.e. the cause and effect between the be havior and the consequence (DogNostics, 2018). I conducted several training sessions like this as I needed us all to understand the behaviors being requested before I moved on to my next step. I would remove the target stick from the environment after each nose target by placing the end of it under my arm because I needed them to understand exactly what was earning them the food reinforcer. We practiced this in several different areas outside the enclosure until I felt very comfortable with our interactions and understanding of an tecedents, behaviors, and consequences. It was time to implement the next step in my training approach and so I went to find the keeper re sponsible for cleaning Dill and Pickles’ enclosure. He told me he did go in but did not interact much with them. He also said they kept their dis tance but would come closer when their food was delivered. My next step, then, was to enter the enclosure. As I walked in, I immediately began tossing treats to the ground in the same area as where I had begun the training outside the enclosure. Again, I was watching and lis tening to their behavior and noting the similarities to what I had seen and heard outside. My next step was to start walking around, but not behind them or when their backs were turned. When they had to take
BARKS from the Guild/March 2020
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