Tuesday, May 5, 2009

#110: What's the point of training a fish?


Someone asked this question after watching one of Blondie's videos and I thought that this video may help explain. As with our seals, training can make medical tests easier to do. In this video, Blondie is getting a routine skin scrape. Dr. Keiko Hirokawa, our vet, takes a microscope slide and lightly scrapes Blondie's side to check for parasites. Since I had trained Blondie to sit in my hand, this was a piece of cake!







See how relaxed she is staying the whole time she is in my hand. She got tons of reinforcement for doing such a great job. Results of the scrape: This little fish is happily parasite free.


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posted by lindsay at 8:50 AM 0 Comments



Tuesday, April 14, 2009

#105: What was the name of M.J.'s monkey ... ?



You guessed it (or not), Bubbles! This is the newest behavior in Blondie's repertoire.



During training sessions, the lumpfish would look up at us while they were waiting for food or the next cool behavior. Sometimes, Blondie pushed water from her mouth right below the surface to make a mini bubble machine. It was so cute, I wanted to show everyone. I put this behavior on a signal by positioning my hand above her head so that she is facing upwards. I give the signal, which is "a starburst of fingers..." (that's a hard one to describe!) with my right hand and wait for her to spit out a little bubble. I immediately reinforce. You can see in the video, she catches on fast- one time she even jumps the gun and blows just as my hand gets into position! This is a great example of capturing a behavior; she blows the bubbles on her own, I put a signal to it.

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posted by lindsay at 9:48 AM 2 Comments



Friday, April 10, 2009

#104: A Fish in the Hand is Worth...



Blondie is back! It's been a while since our last post, so here is a new behavior to get your lumpy fix. I thought it would be cool to train her to sit comfortably in my hand. You can see how I kept my hand steady and let her come to me. After a few nibbles on yummy shrimp, I lightly move my fingers up and touch her belly. You can see at one point I run out of food and as I reach over to get more, she sits on my finger! After a few trials of light tapping and her hovering over my fingers, I start to lift my hand. This behavior took a few weeks to complete, but here is a minute version of what we did. Be sure to check back in with Blondie and me; next behavior...blowing bubbles!





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posted by lindsay at 3:30 PM 1 Comments



Tuesday, January 20, 2009

#87: Blondie Has More Fun



In a previous blog you saw Blondie the lumpfish learn how to do a spin. This time I have trained her to swim through a hoop! When you watch the video, see how I lead her through with food in the beginning. She seems a little hesitant, but with quick reinforcement she becomes very comfortable fast.





Then, I introduce the signal for her to come through--motioning "come here" with my finger, but with her reinforcement still visible in my other fingers. She catches on so fast, she even swims back through the hoop to the starting point! In the end, I don't have any food in my fingers and she swims through with the signal alone. I promptly reinforce her with a "jackpot" (LOTS of those tiny shrimp), to tell her what a fantastic job she did. Stay tuned for more fish training...


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posted by lindsay at 9:11 AM 3 Comments



Thursday, December 18, 2008

#77: Lumpfish goes to school






As Justin has mentioned in previous blogs, we are all getting the awesome opportunity to work with a wide variety of animals around the aquarium. I am training a juvenile lumpfish that I have named Blondie.









I know, I know "training a fish?!" you say. But you would be suprised how much a fish can learn and in a pretty short period of time. Right now, I am training her how to go to her target (a specific object that I have deemed "hers") which is a red spoon. I am also training her how to push a lightweight ball around the tank and even do spins!


Here are two clips of a "spin" training session. In the first one, you can see it takes a few trials to get her to spin. I tap the water to give her direction.



In the second clip, it only takes two trials with two distinct taps, one at almost halfway around and the other almost at the endpoint. She spins super without any taps on the water at the end!



Now that's pretty cool; what should I train next?

Stay tuned for more fish training...


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posted by lindsay at 9:22 AM 7 Comments