Training 102
Training, as with any other thing, works well when done correctly. It’s hard to train an animal if you aren’t consistent, systematic, and variable. A well-known marine mammal trainer, Karen Pryor, has a list of rules to ensure success in training a behavior.
1) train the behavior in small enough increments
2) train one aspect of the behavior at a time (even a jump has several aspects, such as breaching the water, arching the body, etc.)
3) relax other criteria when introducing a new criterion (criteria are the standards by which something can be decided, such as whether or not a behavior was performed correctly)
4) don’t shape for multiple criteria at one time
5) stay ahead of your subject—what if you’ve only planned three steps in training a behavior and suddenly your dolphin predicted what to do up to step six?
6) don’t change trainers midstream
7) there are as many ways to shape a behavior as there are trainers to think these ways up
8) don’t interrupt a session gratuitously
9) quickly review the whole shaping process with a series of easily earned reinforcers when coming back to a training session
10) end each session on a high point, where the animal has felt (as have you) that it has succeeded
The basic synopsis of good training is simply, be consistent, stay on your toes, make it worthwhile for the animal and be precise and complete in what you’re asking of the animal. This process, called shaping, or selectively reinforcing a desired response, is not perfect. The animals are not perfect, and neither are the trainers. Trainers, in fact, often engage in superstitious behaviors that may actually hinder the animal from properly learning a behavior. A superstitious behavior is performed under the notion that it will render a specific response. More often than not, trainers don’t notice that they do it. The problem with this lies mostly in crossing over between trainers. What happens when a dolphin who is used to taking an Sd from a trainer who always puts her hands on her hips before giving the signal gets asked to perform the behavior by another trainer? That dolphin may not perform the behavior because the hands on the hips have become a part of the signal. Dolphins can also have superstitious behaviors. For example, one day a very good trainer went out to give a show at a marine mammal facility. He’d been doing the show for years and years and suddenly the dolphins wouldn’t even come to the station to begin the show. Finally they brought out another trainer and the show began. The next show he tried again, and they still wouldn’t come. Turns out, the trainer had bought new boots. His old boots had had black soles like most shoes, which the dolphins saw before each show at the station. His new boots, however, had white soles. Those dolphins only came to the platform to black-soled shoes.
Training can also often involve encountering unwanted behaviors. For example, in the 80’s at Dolphin Plus, all of the trainers were male. They trained the dolphins to pull at a string when presented with one, which they then translated to taking off women’s bikinis. The male trainers thought this was great, so they reinforced it. Then, along came a female trainer who was having none of it. They stopped reinforcing the behavior, which only caused the dolphins to do it more. This is called an extinction burst, where a previously reinforced behavior suddenly stops receiving reinforcement. This causes the animals to repeat the behavior over and over again until they finally give it up, which is called extinction. A great human example of this is with elevators. Say you live on the 15th floor of a building and every day you take the elevator. One day, the 15th floor button won’t work. You push it again. And again, and again, and again. Eventually you give up and offer another behavior, walking up the stairs, or taking the elevator to the 14th floor if that’s an option. Chances are, you’re going to try the 15th floor button again the next day, and the next, until you finally give up completely and revert to taking the stairs every day. Extinction.
Another way to stop a behavior without giving punishment is by simply ignoring it. When an animal is asked for a behavior and gives another, the trainer will give an LRS, or least reinforcing scenario, to that animal. This involves a short, 3 second “step back” from the failure, which gives the animal a moment to regroup its thoughts. Simply asking for the behavior again right after failure can be confusing, and so the pause is used to tell the animal, “No, that wasn’t it, now calm down and we can try again.” The LRS can be used to reinforce calm behavior, which helps with increasing the chance of success after an initial failure.
You’d think that training animals to do unpleasant things, such as give blood, allow a tube down their throat for hydration, etc., would be difficult. In fact, it can be, but the use of positive association is a powerful thing. The Premack Principle says that a high-probability behavior reinforces a low-probability behavior. That is, if you prick a dolphin with a needle (low probability) and then let it go do its favorite behavior (high probability), it’s likely that they’ll begin to acquire a positive association with the once scary behavior.
Do you ever wonder how someone could possible train a dolphin to do aerial tricks with a simple clap of the hand? Do you just sit there clapping your hands until they do the right behavior? Of course not. A practice called fading is used to gradually change the stimulus controlling an animal’s performance to something more reasonable, like a hand signal. Typically, the first stimulus used is a target pole, a prop that pinpoints a specific location for an animal to touch. By using a target pole, you can teach a dolphin to jump up, because it has to jump up in order to reach the target. Eventually you can fade that stimulus by introducing a hand signal when the behavior is learned, and then eventually completely remove the initial stimulus from the equation. Voila, back flips for petty golf claps.
Some behaviors simply can’t be taught. While you can ask a dolphin to manipulate its movements by having it target a pole, you can’t force it to do things like vocalize. All vocalizations have to be captured. When a behavior, like a click, is spontaneously offered, it can be reinforced and paired with a stimulus that will eventually elicit the behavior. The problem with this type of training is that there are no actual steps, which means that if the behavior suddenly disappears, there’s no way of backtracking to retrain it unless the animal offers it again.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Training 101
What is behavior? All behaviors are influenced by what occurs as a consequence of that performed behavior. You touch a hot stove, the consequence is a burn; the following behavior is one of self-preservation—pull away. You bring your mom a snake from outside while she’s working at her desk, she screams. Unless that’s the reaction you were going for, it’s unlikely you’ll ever do that again. Recurring behaviors form by a means of shaping, of selectively reinforcing responses that approximate a desired response to an increasingly greater degree. This type of behavioral modeling is a prime example of operant conditioning, where consequence is used to shape behaviors.
The ABC’s of Operant Training:
A for Antecedent: whatever precedes the behavior or elicits a specific response (a whistle blowing for a horse at the starting gate)
B for Behavior: the response (the horse begins to run)
C for Consequence: what happens immediately after the behavior (the horse may win because it responded, which would be reinforcing)
Marine mammal training is often based on these three basic principles of conditioning behaviors. There are 7 principle reasons to train animals, as seen by most trainers:
1) Companionship—who wouldn’t want to say they hang out with dolphins all day?
2) Police and rescue work—sea lions have been trained to dive as far as 1000 feet to retrieve objects even humans can’t safely reach
3) Therapy—dolphins have been shown to have vast effects on increasing personal motivation in children with disabilities
4) Entertainment—because it’s just plain fun
5) Education—because it’s important to do a service to both animals in human care as well as in the wild by educating the public on proper treatment and concern for animals
6) Research—because there’s so much left to discover
7) Health—the first and foremost priority of training animals; being able to have an animal participate in its own health maintenance is as important as it gets for marine mammal trainers
So, how do these trainers wave a hand and get four dolphins to do back flips until they blow a seemingly meaningless whistle? Trainers at Dolphin Cove use a type of reinforcement called positive reinforcement, which focuses on adding something to a situation in order to increase a behavior. To go over some terms:
Positive: adding something
Negative: removing something
Reinforcement: increasing something
Punishment: decreasing something
Negative reinforcement: this approach may be effective, but the animal may begin to associate aversive connotations with the reinforcement. For example, a dolphin getting bullied by another dolphin doesn’t like being at the platform with that dolphin. As a “reward,” the trainer may send away (remove, negative) the bully away if the bullied dolphin completes the behavior asked of him. This increases the chance that the bullied dolphin will perform the behavior correctly, because he knows it’ll mean relief from the bully. And while it may be effective, this particular scenario utilizes negative reinforcement in such a way that fear becomes the driving factor in completing a behavior.
Positive punishment: in order to get someone to stop doing someone, you may say something to them that represents your annoyance with their behavior. You are adding (positive) your opinion on their behavior in order to decrease it (punishment). A good example is with training dogs not to bark, change their normal collar to a shock collar and it’s almost guaranteed that the addition of a painful shock is going to decrease their leaving the yard.
Negative punishment: the most notable examples of this type of behavioral shaping is generally found in the realm of raising children. Like it or not, most parents use this form of shaping to change unwanted behaviors in their children. You don’t like that your kid is crying? Ignore them (take away yourself, essentially) to decrease (punishment) the behavior. Same goes for taking away privileges, time-outs, etc. In timeouts, you may think the action is positive (adding an unwanted scenario such as sitting in the corner alone), but in fact it’s more reasonable to say that you are taking something away (you are taking them away from whatever they were doing, such as playing).
Positive reinforcement: we, as emotive beings, are constantly engaging in behaviors in order to get a positive response from others. Something as small as a smile acts as a means of praise that says, if you do whatever you just did again, that person will smile and you’ll likely feel good about it, or reinforced. We rarely, if ever, perform behaviors with the altruistic notion that it will simply make the other person feel good. We always want something in response; we are, in fact, a species driven by desire. Think about it. Why do you ask someone a question? Because you want a response. Why do you make conversation? Because you want to interact? Why do you yell? Because you want someone to know that you’re upset. There is always a reason behind your behaviors, and it’s hard to find any other reason for doing something besides wanting something in return. Try it.
One intriguing and confusing example of training (in terms of whether it is positive or negative, reinforcement or punishment) can be seen in a specific scenario of dog training. Imagine you have a pooch that barks every single time the mailman comes. You could yell at the dog, or put it in another room, or let it keep barking. OR you could remove it from that scenario altogether. Removing the animal from the scenario before the time at which the behavior begins causes the behavior to fade or disappear. If you remove the dog from the house when you know the mailman is coming and take them for a walk, you aren’t allowing them to practice the bad behavior. You are reinforcing the absence of that behavior by removing the ability to engage in it. This is called differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior. The dog can’t bark at the mailman because the mailman simply is not there. The dog is being walked, a primary reinforcer (inherently enjoyed), and the target response (barking at the mailman) is decreasing in frequency. Pretty soon, even if the mailman comes and you’re not out walking, it’s likely that the dog will be at your feet waiting for you to get your butt off the couch rather than standing at the door barking its head off.
A primary reinforcer is something that an animal finds inherently rewarding; its value does not need to be learned. Secondary reinforcers are conditioned by pairing them with primary reinforcers to signify their value. For instance, the dolphins respond to a whistle that the trainers use. They don’t stop the behavior when the whistle is blown because they like the sound of the whistle, they stop because they know that a primary reinforcer (fish, praise, toys) is coming. A secondary reinforcer bridges the gap between the completion of a behavior and the primary reinforcer earned. This is what trainers call using a “bridge”. In the trainers’ cases here, the whistle is used as a bridge. The 5 main properties of a bridge are as follows:
1) stops the behavior
2) marks the apex (the high point, or point of greatest success) of that behavior)
3) gives secondary reinforcement
4) indicates success
5) bridges gap to the primary reinforcer
The point bridge is also used with the dolphins, where a trainer will point at the dolphin that correctly performed the behavior if others were involved and failed. This still indicates success for the animal that earned the bridge, but does not bridge the others. Other examples of secondary reinforcers, like the whistle, are rubs, praise, high-fives and receiving ice. The animals had to learn that these things held value in order to accept them as rewards.
A bridge is a good example of classical condition, which gives a novel stimulus a specific, generally unassociated meaning. The most famous example of this type of condition is, of course, with Pavlov’s dogs, which were conditioned to salivate when a bell rang because of their learned association of that bell with meat. The signals given to the dolphins here to elicit behaviors are called Sd’s or discriminative stimuli. These conditioned signals are paired with, and then eventually elicit, a specific behavior.
For everyone reading this that already knows the basics of psychology and feels like I’m beating a dead horse by explaining all of these terms, I apologize. ☺
The ABC’s of Operant Training:
A for Antecedent: whatever precedes the behavior or elicits a specific response (a whistle blowing for a horse at the starting gate)
B for Behavior: the response (the horse begins to run)
C for Consequence: what happens immediately after the behavior (the horse may win because it responded, which would be reinforcing)
Marine mammal training is often based on these three basic principles of conditioning behaviors. There are 7 principle reasons to train animals, as seen by most trainers:
1) Companionship—who wouldn’t want to say they hang out with dolphins all day?
2) Police and rescue work—sea lions have been trained to dive as far as 1000 feet to retrieve objects even humans can’t safely reach
3) Therapy—dolphins have been shown to have vast effects on increasing personal motivation in children with disabilities
4) Entertainment—because it’s just plain fun
5) Education—because it’s important to do a service to both animals in human care as well as in the wild by educating the public on proper treatment and concern for animals
6) Research—because there’s so much left to discover
7) Health—the first and foremost priority of training animals; being able to have an animal participate in its own health maintenance is as important as it gets for marine mammal trainers
So, how do these trainers wave a hand and get four dolphins to do back flips until they blow a seemingly meaningless whistle? Trainers at Dolphin Cove use a type of reinforcement called positive reinforcement, which focuses on adding something to a situation in order to increase a behavior. To go over some terms:
Positive: adding something
Negative: removing something
Reinforcement: increasing something
Punishment: decreasing something
Negative reinforcement: this approach may be effective, but the animal may begin to associate aversive connotations with the reinforcement. For example, a dolphin getting bullied by another dolphin doesn’t like being at the platform with that dolphin. As a “reward,” the trainer may send away (remove, negative) the bully away if the bullied dolphin completes the behavior asked of him. This increases the chance that the bullied dolphin will perform the behavior correctly, because he knows it’ll mean relief from the bully. And while it may be effective, this particular scenario utilizes negative reinforcement in such a way that fear becomes the driving factor in completing a behavior.
Positive punishment: in order to get someone to stop doing someone, you may say something to them that represents your annoyance with their behavior. You are adding (positive) your opinion on their behavior in order to decrease it (punishment). A good example is with training dogs not to bark, change their normal collar to a shock collar and it’s almost guaranteed that the addition of a painful shock is going to decrease their leaving the yard.
Negative punishment: the most notable examples of this type of behavioral shaping is generally found in the realm of raising children. Like it or not, most parents use this form of shaping to change unwanted behaviors in their children. You don’t like that your kid is crying? Ignore them (take away yourself, essentially) to decrease (punishment) the behavior. Same goes for taking away privileges, time-outs, etc. In timeouts, you may think the action is positive (adding an unwanted scenario such as sitting in the corner alone), but in fact it’s more reasonable to say that you are taking something away (you are taking them away from whatever they were doing, such as playing).
Positive reinforcement: we, as emotive beings, are constantly engaging in behaviors in order to get a positive response from others. Something as small as a smile acts as a means of praise that says, if you do whatever you just did again, that person will smile and you’ll likely feel good about it, or reinforced. We rarely, if ever, perform behaviors with the altruistic notion that it will simply make the other person feel good. We always want something in response; we are, in fact, a species driven by desire. Think about it. Why do you ask someone a question? Because you want a response. Why do you make conversation? Because you want to interact? Why do you yell? Because you want someone to know that you’re upset. There is always a reason behind your behaviors, and it’s hard to find any other reason for doing something besides wanting something in return. Try it.
One intriguing and confusing example of training (in terms of whether it is positive or negative, reinforcement or punishment) can be seen in a specific scenario of dog training. Imagine you have a pooch that barks every single time the mailman comes. You could yell at the dog, or put it in another room, or let it keep barking. OR you could remove it from that scenario altogether. Removing the animal from the scenario before the time at which the behavior begins causes the behavior to fade or disappear. If you remove the dog from the house when you know the mailman is coming and take them for a walk, you aren’t allowing them to practice the bad behavior. You are reinforcing the absence of that behavior by removing the ability to engage in it. This is called differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior. The dog can’t bark at the mailman because the mailman simply is not there. The dog is being walked, a primary reinforcer (inherently enjoyed), and the target response (barking at the mailman) is decreasing in frequency. Pretty soon, even if the mailman comes and you’re not out walking, it’s likely that the dog will be at your feet waiting for you to get your butt off the couch rather than standing at the door barking its head off.
A primary reinforcer is something that an animal finds inherently rewarding; its value does not need to be learned. Secondary reinforcers are conditioned by pairing them with primary reinforcers to signify their value. For instance, the dolphins respond to a whistle that the trainers use. They don’t stop the behavior when the whistle is blown because they like the sound of the whistle, they stop because they know that a primary reinforcer (fish, praise, toys) is coming. A secondary reinforcer bridges the gap between the completion of a behavior and the primary reinforcer earned. This is what trainers call using a “bridge”. In the trainers’ cases here, the whistle is used as a bridge. The 5 main properties of a bridge are as follows:
1) stops the behavior
2) marks the apex (the high point, or point of greatest success) of that behavior)
3) gives secondary reinforcement
4) indicates success
5) bridges gap to the primary reinforcer
The point bridge is also used with the dolphins, where a trainer will point at the dolphin that correctly performed the behavior if others were involved and failed. This still indicates success for the animal that earned the bridge, but does not bridge the others. Other examples of secondary reinforcers, like the whistle, are rubs, praise, high-fives and receiving ice. The animals had to learn that these things held value in order to accept them as rewards.
A bridge is a good example of classical condition, which gives a novel stimulus a specific, generally unassociated meaning. The most famous example of this type of condition is, of course, with Pavlov’s dogs, which were conditioned to salivate when a bell rang because of their learned association of that bell with meat. The signals given to the dolphins here to elicit behaviors are called Sd’s or discriminative stimuli. These conditioned signals are paired with, and then eventually elicit, a specific behavior.
For everyone reading this that already knows the basics of psychology and feels like I’m beating a dead horse by explaining all of these terms, I apologize. ☺
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Well…I Guess Dolphins Do Bite…And Man, Do They Ever Pack a Punch*
So, I know you’re never supposed to let your guard down with training or working with animals, whether they be wild or in human care. But, dolphins are just so darn adorable and lovable that it’s hard not to just say to yourself, “Okay, I’m safe here.” Today, I learned my lesson, ten-fold. During a natural swim, where there is no human to dolphin contact expect any contact that the dolphins decide to make…well, let’s just say that contact was made. Leo, the little boy that everyone else in the lagoon teases and chases, decided it was his turn to pick on someone his own size, or close to it—me. The thing is, I don’t think that he got the memo on the fact that he weighs exactly 3 times my weight. And that I don’t have a layer of blubber to cushion blunt impacts. Or that I meant him no harm, for that matter. Today, Leo had his own agenda: show Amelia, in every way possible, that I am just downright upset with her. No, infuriated. During the swim, Leo proceeded to bite me (more mouthing than biting really, but terrifying nonetheless when you see them going for your arm) and then yelled at me. Now, dolphin yelling may seem like a joke, as they always seem to look so happy and cheerful all the time. But, let me tell you, when an angry dolphin is up in your face, in their aqueous turf, and they’re screaming at you…oh boy, you better pray they can’t tell that your heart just skipped a beat. Oh wait…they can. When dolphins yell, they generally get right up in your face (I’m talking nose-to-nose), open their mouths and squawk. Not that scary on video, but my goodness does it make for a good diuretic when you’re in their territory witnessing the act face-to-face. Why Leo was upset with me, I do not know. But it remains a fact that these are animals, not humans (although we are in fact animals, I’m simply making the distinction here before anthropomorphism and non-human animals). We cannot give them humanistic attributes and expect them to live up to those attributes. I cannot say to Leo, “I love you,” and expect him to show me some type of gesture in return, and yet on Sunday he may be lovesick with the idea of simply being near me. We, as separate species, are on separate schedules, of our wants and needs, of all things. And that is why, while I was simply swimming along and minding my own business, that I felt a sudden and pointed pain at the center of my chest as I went flying backward through the water. All of a sudden survival mode kicked in and I was scurrying up the wall of the lagoon like a scared mouse that had just had its tail lopped off by the mousetrap. Two of the trainers looked to me as if nothing had happened and for a moment I was unsure of why there wasn’t a commotion about what had just occurred.
“I can’t—” I started to say, but was cut short as my lungs refused to take in more air. “—breathe. I can’t breathe.” The trainers looked at me calmly. I was less than calm, to put it lightly. I had just had a 375 pound mass slam into my sternum and I was not about to accept that nothing should be done about it. I felt at my chest where Leo had charged me with his rostrum, expecting there to be a hole of some sort, something dramatic. It took me a few minutes to return to normal breathing. As I tried to grapple my way out of the lagoon one of the trainers approached me slowly.
“Okay, what I need you to do is get back in the water.” I looked at her like it was my last wish to be anywhere near the water, but stopped climbing nonetheless. “If we let you out now, we’re telling Leo that he got what he wanted, that he got a reaction out of you by getting you to leave the lagoon.” As I slipped back into the water I tried to slow my heart rate. They can echolocate to tell when your pulse has dropped or quickened, and I did not want Leo to see that mine was suddenly pounding away senselessly. When I got out of the water several minutes later I had forgotten my manners and left the trainers down at the lagoon with buckets to carry as I slunk away to the office where I had my breakdown exactly how I wanted it: out of sight and unbeknownst to them. I knew that it was the adrenaline that was causing me to freak out, but the simple presence of the stuff wasn’t enough to convince me that my reaction wasn’t wholly due to a hormonal response. You think you know these creatures and then when things like this happen you feel like you can’t trust them anymore. But why did I trust them in the first place? It felt almost like a harsh breakup. I’d say “Morning Leo, hello handsome,” every morning, to which he’d wiggle delightedly and click excitedly. And now, this? When the trainers came back up they told me all about incidents they’d had with previous dolphins, how hurtful it really can feel when you have a bond with them. And it’s true; I think the fear I felt was completely due to the fact of my utter surprise at the incident. And, why was I surprised? Because I didn’t think Leo would want to harm me. But, today he did. Lesson learned. Even though it’s now difficult to breathe and every time I sneeze I feel like maybe my chest is going to explode…Leo’s still a sweetheart, I’ll just have to learn to echolocate by the next time he plots a sneak attack, because this dolphin’s given a whole new meaning to the term “broken heart”.
*Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the creation of this blog post. Well…unless you count me. :)
“I can’t—” I started to say, but was cut short as my lungs refused to take in more air. “—breathe. I can’t breathe.” The trainers looked at me calmly. I was less than calm, to put it lightly. I had just had a 375 pound mass slam into my sternum and I was not about to accept that nothing should be done about it. I felt at my chest where Leo had charged me with his rostrum, expecting there to be a hole of some sort, something dramatic. It took me a few minutes to return to normal breathing. As I tried to grapple my way out of the lagoon one of the trainers approached me slowly.
“Okay, what I need you to do is get back in the water.” I looked at her like it was my last wish to be anywhere near the water, but stopped climbing nonetheless. “If we let you out now, we’re telling Leo that he got what he wanted, that he got a reaction out of you by getting you to leave the lagoon.” As I slipped back into the water I tried to slow my heart rate. They can echolocate to tell when your pulse has dropped or quickened, and I did not want Leo to see that mine was suddenly pounding away senselessly. When I got out of the water several minutes later I had forgotten my manners and left the trainers down at the lagoon with buckets to carry as I slunk away to the office where I had my breakdown exactly how I wanted it: out of sight and unbeknownst to them. I knew that it was the adrenaline that was causing me to freak out, but the simple presence of the stuff wasn’t enough to convince me that my reaction wasn’t wholly due to a hormonal response. You think you know these creatures and then when things like this happen you feel like you can’t trust them anymore. But why did I trust them in the first place? It felt almost like a harsh breakup. I’d say “Morning Leo, hello handsome,” every morning, to which he’d wiggle delightedly and click excitedly. And now, this? When the trainers came back up they told me all about incidents they’d had with previous dolphins, how hurtful it really can feel when you have a bond with them. And it’s true; I think the fear I felt was completely due to the fact of my utter surprise at the incident. And, why was I surprised? Because I didn’t think Leo would want to harm me. But, today he did. Lesson learned. Even though it’s now difficult to breathe and every time I sneeze I feel like maybe my chest is going to explode…Leo’s still a sweetheart, I’ll just have to learn to echolocate by the next time he plots a sneak attack, because this dolphin’s given a whole new meaning to the term “broken heart”.
*Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the creation of this blog post. Well…unless you count me. :)
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Research and Beyond
It’s question-answering time!!!
Is there research being done at this facility?
There is, in fact, research being done both at Dolphin Cove and their sister facility, Dolphins Plus. Some of it is still in the logistical stages of collecting initial data and the such, but other research is ongoing or on its way to being published. Some of the research going on at Dolphins Plus focuses on signature whistles and mother to calf whistles. Essentially, each dolphin has its own whistle (like saying someone’s name) and uses other whistles for calling specific dolphins (like a calf). At Dolphins Plus, they’ve collected whistles from mothers and their related calves, mothers and non-related calves, and many other variables to study how exactly these dolphins are calling each other. For instance, a mother can call a non-related calf to come to her without resulting in her related calf coming too. They use sound charts, essentially, which show the dips, peaks and frequencies of different pitches used in each whistle. They know that signature whistles and mother to calf whistles exist because they have these sound charts which tell us that they are using the same whistle each time to call a specific dolphin. Both facililities also do daily ethograms, which are essentially behavioral studies where behavior (swimming, diving, floating, etc.) are noted at 30 second intervals for 30 minutes twice daily in order to log how each dolphin is interacting, or isn’t, with others.
Who is in charge of the dolphins & their care?
There is a curator here that was part of the founding of the original facility, Dolphins Plus, and then multiple trainers for both facilities. I actually don’t know how many trainers they have at Dolphins Plus, but there are 4 at Dolphin Cove. The actual care of the dolphins is in more hands than just the trainer’s. Interns help out with daily duties, there is a vet that comes to check up on the dolphins, photographers to photograph injuries or new marks on the dolphins, maintenance people, etc. Trainers work hard to train specific behaviors with the dolphins that will be necessary to perform should the dolphins ever need medical attention. For example, Leo’s being trained to beach onto a platform that moves up and down, which is extremely crucial, should they ever need to look over his whole body out of water.
Is there a trained Biologist?
There is no trained biologist, per se, but all of the trainers have degrees in wildlife and fisheries sciences. Some even have PhD’s, like at Dolphins Plus where one woman is in charge of the on-going research. What I really admire about both of these facilities is that the trainers don’t just come to work and do what they have to do and then leave. You’ll see journal articles posted on the bulletin board with the latest dolphin research, everyone reads up on whatever’s going on at the Marine Mammal Conservancy, and the facility is actively involved in a stranded marine mammal rescue program. These girls (it’s all girls where I’m working) don’t only know their stuff, they keep up on it as well. It’s not just a job to them, it’s a lifestyle, and that’s exactly the type of dedication and compassion these wonderful creatures deserve.
Has anyone ever been bitten by one of the dolphins?
To my knowledge, no one has ever been bitten. They’ll pretend to bite by putting their mouths around your arm or leg just to see if you’ll yank it away, but that’s mostly just a fun game for them. One of the dolphins, Alfonz, is actually trained to “bite” your fingers. You put your fingers in the corners of his mouth (they have no teeth at the very back of their mouth) and he closes down. It looks like you’re getting bitten, but in fact you’re just getting gummed—completely harmless and kind of adorable.
I really promise that I’m going to write a section on training; I was going to do that today, but I apparently left all my interesting notes at work. I’ll do it soon!
If anyone has any more questions, please ask! It’s fun to see what people are interested in!
Is there research being done at this facility?
There is, in fact, research being done both at Dolphin Cove and their sister facility, Dolphins Plus. Some of it is still in the logistical stages of collecting initial data and the such, but other research is ongoing or on its way to being published. Some of the research going on at Dolphins Plus focuses on signature whistles and mother to calf whistles. Essentially, each dolphin has its own whistle (like saying someone’s name) and uses other whistles for calling specific dolphins (like a calf). At Dolphins Plus, they’ve collected whistles from mothers and their related calves, mothers and non-related calves, and many other variables to study how exactly these dolphins are calling each other. For instance, a mother can call a non-related calf to come to her without resulting in her related calf coming too. They use sound charts, essentially, which show the dips, peaks and frequencies of different pitches used in each whistle. They know that signature whistles and mother to calf whistles exist because they have these sound charts which tell us that they are using the same whistle each time to call a specific dolphin. Both facililities also do daily ethograms, which are essentially behavioral studies where behavior (swimming, diving, floating, etc.) are noted at 30 second intervals for 30 minutes twice daily in order to log how each dolphin is interacting, or isn’t, with others.
Who is in charge of the dolphins & their care?
There is a curator here that was part of the founding of the original facility, Dolphins Plus, and then multiple trainers for both facilities. I actually don’t know how many trainers they have at Dolphins Plus, but there are 4 at Dolphin Cove. The actual care of the dolphins is in more hands than just the trainer’s. Interns help out with daily duties, there is a vet that comes to check up on the dolphins, photographers to photograph injuries or new marks on the dolphins, maintenance people, etc. Trainers work hard to train specific behaviors with the dolphins that will be necessary to perform should the dolphins ever need medical attention. For example, Leo’s being trained to beach onto a platform that moves up and down, which is extremely crucial, should they ever need to look over his whole body out of water.
Is there a trained Biologist?
There is no trained biologist, per se, but all of the trainers have degrees in wildlife and fisheries sciences. Some even have PhD’s, like at Dolphins Plus where one woman is in charge of the on-going research. What I really admire about both of these facilities is that the trainers don’t just come to work and do what they have to do and then leave. You’ll see journal articles posted on the bulletin board with the latest dolphin research, everyone reads up on whatever’s going on at the Marine Mammal Conservancy, and the facility is actively involved in a stranded marine mammal rescue program. These girls (it’s all girls where I’m working) don’t only know their stuff, they keep up on it as well. It’s not just a job to them, it’s a lifestyle, and that’s exactly the type of dedication and compassion these wonderful creatures deserve.
Has anyone ever been bitten by one of the dolphins?
To my knowledge, no one has ever been bitten. They’ll pretend to bite by putting their mouths around your arm or leg just to see if you’ll yank it away, but that’s mostly just a fun game for them. One of the dolphins, Alfonz, is actually trained to “bite” your fingers. You put your fingers in the corners of his mouth (they have no teeth at the very back of their mouth) and he closes down. It looks like you’re getting bitten, but in fact you’re just getting gummed—completely harmless and kind of adorable.
I really promise that I’m going to write a section on training; I was going to do that today, but I apparently left all my interesting notes at work. I’ll do it soon!
If anyone has any more questions, please ask! It’s fun to see what people are interested in!
Monday, January 10, 2011
Let's Meet the Gang
Day 6:
Thankfully, my landlady has a Dell that I was able to use to upload videos and photos. There are currently three videos on my Facebook wall, and I will get to uploading more soon.
Now it’s time to introduce the gang. Even though I’m still very much getting to know their personalities, I can at least tell you some basic facts about the dolphins here at Dolphin Cove.
Samantha:
Samantha was the only dolphin at Dolphin Cove to be taken from the wild while it was still legal in the 80’s. They don’t know her exact age because she was collected as a calf, but she’s estimated to be around 26 years old. She is the only female at Cove and seems to like that monopolization quite nicely. Sam is currently preggers, approximately halfway through her 12-month pregnancy. Dolphins in human care (the more politically correct word choice for captivity) have a 50% birth success, while the other 50% either die in birth or shortly after due to complications. One example of a calf death post successful birth was due to a hurricane in which pollutants or foreign material was likely introduced into the lagoon where the dolphins were living, causing the vulnerable calf to become terminally ill. Sam just had her ultrasound and the little calf is swimming and looking quite healthy. He’s got a full bladder, which is apparently a good sign. Sam is quite easy to tell apart from the males not only by her smaller size (marginally so, by first glance, as she is currently gigantic, as pregnant mammals go) but by her crooked jaw. She had an accident one night while the trainers were away, and dislocated her jaw. The trainers think she ran into something and the veterinarian opted to allow the jaw to heal crooked rather than resetting the jaw and risking further damage. Sam is still fully functionally, albeit funny-looking with her permanently eschewed jaw. Dolphins don’t chew their food, mainly to avoid saltwater consumption, so the throat simply closes around a fish whole. Therefore, she’s not missing out on any chewing. And somehow, the guys still find her irresistible. Sam has a small chunk out of her right fluke (right “fin” of her tail) that also helps to identify her when her face isn’t visible. Sam is 375 pounds (likely more, now that she’s knocked up and getting fatter by the day) and 8 feet and 5 inches long.
Kimbit:
Kimbit is a handsome fellow. His parents, Dinghy and Little Bit, lived over at Dolphins Plus, the sister facility. Dinghy is still there as the alpha female, but Little Bit died last year from hemachromatosis. The build-up of iron in his blood essentially killed him, and it was obviously a very sad occurrence for both facilities. Kimbit is what the trainers like to call an essentially “perfect” dolphin, by appearance standards. He’s essentially flawless, has few scars and usually has no rake marks from any dolphins on him. He has no real distinguishing characteristics from Leo except that his stomach is more white than pink and he is slightly larger. He also has a small dent above his right eye that looks like a small football. His dorsal fin has two small c-shaped notches on the back. Kimbit is also a darker grey than Leo, though slightly lighter than Alfonz. Kimbit is 465 pounds and 9 feet and 4 inches long. He is 17 years old, and was born just a month after Alfonz.
Alfonz:
Alfonz is the largest of the four dolphins at Cove. He’s a whopping 502 pounds and 9 feet and 7 inches long. He has quite the enormous melon and his peduncle (dorsal fin) dwarfs the other three’s. He has a distinguishing white scar on the front of the peduncle and a yellowish rostrum just like his son, Leo. He has a faint white circle around both eyes, also seen in Leo. Alfonz is a bit of a thief when it comes to feeding time. I don’t know much about him yet, but I’m looking to get to know him better.
Samantha switches back and forth between Alfonz and Kimbit in terms of who she swims with and fools around with, and so those two males tend to stick to her quite closely. This also means that the trainers can’t be sure of who the father is. Perhaps she should go on the Maury Show?
Leo:
Leo is the baby of the group. Born in 2003, he’s only 7 going on 8 years old. He was the first dolphin to be born at Dolphin Cove. He is only 315 pounds and 7 feet and 8.5 inches, but for what he lacks in size he makes up for in adorableness. Alfonz and Nicky (at Theater of the Sea, a non-related facility), Leo’s parents, both had pink bellies, and so Leo has a super-charged pink belly. This gives him a bit more color than the others, although he is a much paler grey than everyone else. Like Alfonz, he has a yellowish rostrum and faint white circles around his eyes. His peduncle is hook-shaped. Leo is the lover of the bunch. Unfortunately, he gets bullied and chased by the other three because he is the submissive one of the group, but for some reason he still always seems to be the most cheerful. For my family that knows my dogs: Leo is definitely the Joey of the bunch, forgetful of any unhappy moments and eager for the bright future. Leo is also one of the quickest learners, and he even sometimes performs his behaviors without being asked. When I say that, I don’t mean he anticipates being asked or does it just to see if he can get a fish. He simply does it to show off, to say, “Look what I did for you!” Leo has been working on a backward strut, which essentially is a behavior where he comes up out of the water partially and pumps his torso back and forth to give the appearance of walking backwards. Mind you, he’s only been working on this behavior with his trainer for a few days, but when I went down to the lagoon with another intern today he was so excited to see us that he did what he thought would most impress us: he did the backward strut. He knew that this new behavior was exciting for his trainer, and so he chose what he thought would make us most excited and did it. That’s a damn smart dolphin. Even though these guys are really well trained in all their behaviors, they don’t usually do them for the heck of it. They do them because they know they’ll get reinforced. The funny thing with Leo is that even a laugh of shout of glee, an expression of joy or love, is enough reinforcement for him to voluntarily do the behavior. Even stranger, he didn’t know he would be positively reinforced with laughter and applause when he did the backward strut; he was performing his own test, simply hoping we would like his performance. And of course, we did. If you can’t already tell, Leo is my favorite.
Unfortunately, Leo has a respiratory illness that causes him to “chuff” on occasion, which really is just a fancy word for loud coughing. Today he was actually breaching and purposely slamming his side against the water in an attempt to dislodge unwanted gunk in his lungs. After he finished chuffing he swam up to another intern and I and twirled for us. I noticed that, along with showing off, he likes to tease a bit, trying to make you think he’s going to do something naughty when he’s really not. For instance, when a dolphin slaps their tail against the water, it’s usually a sign of agitation. Leo will dive down and just as it will seem like he’s going to smack the water and spray us with water, he;ll slide his tail gracefully into the water without so much as a droplet reaching our dry clothes.
When scraping the rogue algae off the dock the other day (now my favorite job despite the crick in my neck after 30 minutes of bending over the docks) he kept coming up to me and nudging me with his rostrum. When that didn’t get a rise out of me (you’re not supposed to reach out for them, no matter how damn cute they’re being) he decided to play the “who’s braver than whom” game. And so, as I diligently scraped algae, Leo opened his mouth and crept slowly towards my arm. At first I immediately withdrew my hand from the water, thinking he was about to gnaw on me. Then I saw his glee as he swam away for a moment. I put my arm back in the water and, low and behold, he came back, mouth open and going for my arm. I kept my arm there for a bit longer until he actually put his mouth around my arm. Granted, he kept his mouth open, but I was unsure of his intentions. Again, I withdrew my arm. He, of course, had won again, although I still didn’t get the game. The third time he came back he actually started to close his mouth around my arm, but never all the way. His teeth never touched my arm, and if I had wanted to I could’ve easily pulled away.
And so, I sat there scraping the algae off the dock as Leo played “chicken” with my arm. He looked at me with those lovable, dopy eyes that said, “I’m gonna nom on your arm if you don’t pull it away,” but at that point I knew better. He was simply trying to get a reaction out of me, and while I wanted to play, I thought that this game would likely be one better to ignore rather than condone. No matter how harmless he is, we don’t want him playing “chicken” with the customers any time soon. Eventually he lost interest in my learned restraint and simply bobbed next to me. At one point he dove down and came back to give me a piece of grass, but after that he decided that I’d figured out his ploy and that he’d have to find a better pastime than freaking me out with fake biting. What a cutie.
Expect another post tomorrow on current dolphin research and the basics of dolphin training.
If anyone ever wants to know anything specific about the dolphins, the facility, or anything else, just leave a comment and I’ll get to it as soon as I can. :)
Thankfully, my landlady has a Dell that I was able to use to upload videos and photos. There are currently three videos on my Facebook wall, and I will get to uploading more soon.
Now it’s time to introduce the gang. Even though I’m still very much getting to know their personalities, I can at least tell you some basic facts about the dolphins here at Dolphin Cove.
Samantha:
Samantha was the only dolphin at Dolphin Cove to be taken from the wild while it was still legal in the 80’s. They don’t know her exact age because she was collected as a calf, but she’s estimated to be around 26 years old. She is the only female at Cove and seems to like that monopolization quite nicely. Sam is currently preggers, approximately halfway through her 12-month pregnancy. Dolphins in human care (the more politically correct word choice for captivity) have a 50% birth success, while the other 50% either die in birth or shortly after due to complications. One example of a calf death post successful birth was due to a hurricane in which pollutants or foreign material was likely introduced into the lagoon where the dolphins were living, causing the vulnerable calf to become terminally ill. Sam just had her ultrasound and the little calf is swimming and looking quite healthy. He’s got a full bladder, which is apparently a good sign. Sam is quite easy to tell apart from the males not only by her smaller size (marginally so, by first glance, as she is currently gigantic, as pregnant mammals go) but by her crooked jaw. She had an accident one night while the trainers were away, and dislocated her jaw. The trainers think she ran into something and the veterinarian opted to allow the jaw to heal crooked rather than resetting the jaw and risking further damage. Sam is still fully functionally, albeit funny-looking with her permanently eschewed jaw. Dolphins don’t chew their food, mainly to avoid saltwater consumption, so the throat simply closes around a fish whole. Therefore, she’s not missing out on any chewing. And somehow, the guys still find her irresistible. Sam has a small chunk out of her right fluke (right “fin” of her tail) that also helps to identify her when her face isn’t visible. Sam is 375 pounds (likely more, now that she’s knocked up and getting fatter by the day) and 8 feet and 5 inches long.
Kimbit:
Kimbit is a handsome fellow. His parents, Dinghy and Little Bit, lived over at Dolphins Plus, the sister facility. Dinghy is still there as the alpha female, but Little Bit died last year from hemachromatosis. The build-up of iron in his blood essentially killed him, and it was obviously a very sad occurrence for both facilities. Kimbit is what the trainers like to call an essentially “perfect” dolphin, by appearance standards. He’s essentially flawless, has few scars and usually has no rake marks from any dolphins on him. He has no real distinguishing characteristics from Leo except that his stomach is more white than pink and he is slightly larger. He also has a small dent above his right eye that looks like a small football. His dorsal fin has two small c-shaped notches on the back. Kimbit is also a darker grey than Leo, though slightly lighter than Alfonz. Kimbit is 465 pounds and 9 feet and 4 inches long. He is 17 years old, and was born just a month after Alfonz.
Alfonz:
Alfonz is the largest of the four dolphins at Cove. He’s a whopping 502 pounds and 9 feet and 7 inches long. He has quite the enormous melon and his peduncle (dorsal fin) dwarfs the other three’s. He has a distinguishing white scar on the front of the peduncle and a yellowish rostrum just like his son, Leo. He has a faint white circle around both eyes, also seen in Leo. Alfonz is a bit of a thief when it comes to feeding time. I don’t know much about him yet, but I’m looking to get to know him better.
Samantha switches back and forth between Alfonz and Kimbit in terms of who she swims with and fools around with, and so those two males tend to stick to her quite closely. This also means that the trainers can’t be sure of who the father is. Perhaps she should go on the Maury Show?
Leo:
Leo is the baby of the group. Born in 2003, he’s only 7 going on 8 years old. He was the first dolphin to be born at Dolphin Cove. He is only 315 pounds and 7 feet and 8.5 inches, but for what he lacks in size he makes up for in adorableness. Alfonz and Nicky (at Theater of the Sea, a non-related facility), Leo’s parents, both had pink bellies, and so Leo has a super-charged pink belly. This gives him a bit more color than the others, although he is a much paler grey than everyone else. Like Alfonz, he has a yellowish rostrum and faint white circles around his eyes. His peduncle is hook-shaped. Leo is the lover of the bunch. Unfortunately, he gets bullied and chased by the other three because he is the submissive one of the group, but for some reason he still always seems to be the most cheerful. For my family that knows my dogs: Leo is definitely the Joey of the bunch, forgetful of any unhappy moments and eager for the bright future. Leo is also one of the quickest learners, and he even sometimes performs his behaviors without being asked. When I say that, I don’t mean he anticipates being asked or does it just to see if he can get a fish. He simply does it to show off, to say, “Look what I did for you!” Leo has been working on a backward strut, which essentially is a behavior where he comes up out of the water partially and pumps his torso back and forth to give the appearance of walking backwards. Mind you, he’s only been working on this behavior with his trainer for a few days, but when I went down to the lagoon with another intern today he was so excited to see us that he did what he thought would most impress us: he did the backward strut. He knew that this new behavior was exciting for his trainer, and so he chose what he thought would make us most excited and did it. That’s a damn smart dolphin. Even though these guys are really well trained in all their behaviors, they don’t usually do them for the heck of it. They do them because they know they’ll get reinforced. The funny thing with Leo is that even a laugh of shout of glee, an expression of joy or love, is enough reinforcement for him to voluntarily do the behavior. Even stranger, he didn’t know he would be positively reinforced with laughter and applause when he did the backward strut; he was performing his own test, simply hoping we would like his performance. And of course, we did. If you can’t already tell, Leo is my favorite.
Unfortunately, Leo has a respiratory illness that causes him to “chuff” on occasion, which really is just a fancy word for loud coughing. Today he was actually breaching and purposely slamming his side against the water in an attempt to dislodge unwanted gunk in his lungs. After he finished chuffing he swam up to another intern and I and twirled for us. I noticed that, along with showing off, he likes to tease a bit, trying to make you think he’s going to do something naughty when he’s really not. For instance, when a dolphin slaps their tail against the water, it’s usually a sign of agitation. Leo will dive down and just as it will seem like he’s going to smack the water and spray us with water, he;ll slide his tail gracefully into the water without so much as a droplet reaching our dry clothes.
When scraping the rogue algae off the dock the other day (now my favorite job despite the crick in my neck after 30 minutes of bending over the docks) he kept coming up to me and nudging me with his rostrum. When that didn’t get a rise out of me (you’re not supposed to reach out for them, no matter how damn cute they’re being) he decided to play the “who’s braver than whom” game. And so, as I diligently scraped algae, Leo opened his mouth and crept slowly towards my arm. At first I immediately withdrew my hand from the water, thinking he was about to gnaw on me. Then I saw his glee as he swam away for a moment. I put my arm back in the water and, low and behold, he came back, mouth open and going for my arm. I kept my arm there for a bit longer until he actually put his mouth around my arm. Granted, he kept his mouth open, but I was unsure of his intentions. Again, I withdrew my arm. He, of course, had won again, although I still didn’t get the game. The third time he came back he actually started to close his mouth around my arm, but never all the way. His teeth never touched my arm, and if I had wanted to I could’ve easily pulled away.
And so, I sat there scraping the algae off the dock as Leo played “chicken” with my arm. He looked at me with those lovable, dopy eyes that said, “I’m gonna nom on your arm if you don’t pull it away,” but at that point I knew better. He was simply trying to get a reaction out of me, and while I wanted to play, I thought that this game would likely be one better to ignore rather than condone. No matter how harmless he is, we don’t want him playing “chicken” with the customers any time soon. Eventually he lost interest in my learned restraint and simply bobbed next to me. At one point he dove down and came back to give me a piece of grass, but after that he decided that I’d figured out his ploy and that he’d have to find a better pastime than freaking me out with fake biting. What a cutie.
Expect another post tomorrow on current dolphin research and the basics of dolphin training.
If anyone ever wants to know anything specific about the dolphins, the facility, or anything else, just leave a comment and I’ll get to it as soon as I can. :)
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Samantha
The picture I have as my profile picture here is a picture of Samantha, the only female dolphin at Dolphin Cove. She's 27 (dolphins live from about 35-50 years old) years old and has a crooked jaw, as you can tell. One morning the trainers came in and she had dislocated it somehow; instead of resetting it and risking further injury they let her jaw heal that way. She can still open her mouth all the way and has no trouble communicating with other dolphins or eating, despite the injury. And now she's got some character. :)
How Smart Are They, Really?
How do we define human intelligence? IQ tests miss something that uniquely defines what we consider “intelligent” creatures: personality. While an IQ test may be able to gauge whether or not you have the insight enough to uncover a complex pattern or solve a difficult math problem, it cannot predict your social decisions or your level of ability in social interactions.
Dolphins, much like humans, are very social creatures. Richard Leakey previously studied dolphin intelligence, and came to the conclusion that intelligence is primarily defined by the social complexity of a being. That is, are the animals able to communicate through various emotive means, whether the social interaction is one of foraging, protecting, playing, or learning? Dolphins have a great capacity of learning from one another; it is often the case that one dolphin can be taught a complex behavior and easily teach it to another without the trainer’s help. The ability to recognize a new behavior, isolate its environmental conditions and perform it perfectly without having to be taught by the trainer that requested the behavior is quite astounding.
Dolphins group hunt, creating “bubbles” in the wild, where they work together to pool schools of fish into one area and then take turns alternating between guarding the bubble’s integrity and nabbing a fish for themselves. The ability to communicate successfully allows them to not only trap prey, but also to keep the prey at bay so that feeding time doesn’t become a free-for-all. While sheer brain mass may be an indicator of intelligence, it is not always true that larger brains mean higher thinking. What must be considered is the encephalization quotient of an animal, or the relative size of the brain to the rest of the body. Our EQ is two times that of a dolphin, although a dolphin has a larger surface area due to complex infoldings of the cerebral tissue. This surface area essentially allows for neural function; the greater the area, the higher the function. That’s not to say that humans are smarter than dolphins or vice versa.
In fact, we shouldn’t think about it in terms of “smarter than” because our worlds are vastly different. Take, for example, a New Yorker out of New York and drop them off in a jungle somewhere. Chances are they won’t last long without some help from the locals. Now, take someone from that same jungle and plop them down in New York. Again, they won’t find themselves having an easy time without the help of a person that understands their surroundings intimately. It is believed that the higher cerebral surface area in dolphins is crucial to the variance in environment from us. While we live in a world where we generally walk on two feet on flat surfaces to get places, dolphins utilize their 3-D surroundings to the greatest degree. They don’t just simply swim in straight lines or take underwater sidewalks to where they want to go: they have to be able to navigate in a highly variant environment.
Specifically, it’s the neocortex that’s larger in dolphins; this part of the brain makes up 98% of the cortex in dolphins and only 67% in humans. The neocortex is responsible for creativity and imagination, two crucial pieces to flexibility in a marine environment. The cerebellum in dolphins is larger relative to the rest of the brain than in humans. This is the central location for cognition and motor control, yet another crucial aspect of agile swimming. We often think of dolphins as having very acute senses due to their abilities to respond quickly to various stimuli. However, the visual centers of dolphins are actually less developed than in humans. Dolphins exhibit monoscopic vision, meaning that they can focus their eyes on different objects at the same time. However, while they can focus their left eye on one thing and the right on another, they are not capable of stereoscopic vision as exhibited in humans. They cannot focus in on one object with both eyes unless they are looking directly below them. Therefore, it is crucial to have some other mechanism by which to gauge distance from objects, their size, material, etc. It is the auditory center that gives dolphins such acuity in movement and awareness of surroundings. A dolphin’s ears are mere pinprick-sized holes on either side of the head. However, their ability to echolocate is actually what gives them such skill in movement without the use of vision. Clicks are sent out through the melon (area in the head) which focuses the clicks (acts as a kind of lens, so to speak). Lower frequency clicks allow the dolphin to gain a general sense of their surroundings, while higher frequencies allow for focusing in further on an object. Clicks are made every 50-120 milliseconds. The echo from an object bounces back and is registered in the hollow bones of the jaw and some fatty tissue surrounding the ears. This allows them to gauge not only where an object is spatially, but also its exact shape, and even density. Dolphins can echolocate anything from a rock to surgical pins from a fractured hip. They’re that good. In fact, they’re even able to teach each other behaviors without any visual aid.
A dolphin trained a behavior in a separate room can communicate with the untrained dolphin in the next pool without any visual cues how to perform the behavior. And the untrained dolphin will do it perfectly. Dolphins also often mimic behavior, both in humans and other dolphins. These behaviors have been noted to be as simple as a calf mimicking its mother’s breaching (jumping out of the water, usually because they’re upset) to a calf that, upon observing a man blowing smoke rings with a cigar, went to its mother to acquire milk and came back to the man to show him her milk rings she then blew into the water.
Now that your mind’s blown, we’ll go right in that direction: blowholes! Despite general belief, dolphins don’t have vocal chords. They produce all the sounds they make through nasal sacs and sinus passages. Sounds are made through the blowhole, not the mouth, although the mouth may open and move in order to alter pitch of a sound. The blowhole is used for breathing; dolphins do not breathe through their mouth ever. In fact, their throat remains closed off unless receiving food and acts kind of like a sphincter muscle to prevent water from going in. When a dolphin breathes, it always exhales before it inhales in order to blow out any water that may be resting on top of the hole. Dolphins communicate through whistles and clicks, heard through the blowhole.
Dolphins have signature whistles that allow other dolphins to identify them, which is useful when communicating information to other dolphins (in case they want to trash talk, which believe me, they do) and to keep track of genetic relationships to prevent inbreeding. Signature whistles are used much like we use names and can be altered depending on the situation at hand. For example, consider how a child says “Mom” when they’re asking a question. Now consider how that same word sounds when the child is terrified of something. The same idea applies for dolphins; trainers will often see mothers suddenly take off to attend to a calf that seems fine, and yet it has changed the signature whistle to say, “I’m hungry” or “I’m stuck”. This seems to be the primary way that dolphins communicate emotions, as well as through body language. However, unlike humans, dolphins cannot change their facial expression. Their “happiness” is rather perpetual, as their jawlines tend to slant slightly upward to give the appearance of a smile. As humans, it’s ingrained into us that this facial expression should be associated with joy, complacency, satisfaction, and yet in dolphins it cannot be used as a signal for emotion.
I asked a question today that I thought might be received with odd looks, “Aside from the fact that dolphins have no limbs, what prevents them from being terrestrial mammals?” Actually, the answer is quite interesting. For one matter, dolphins can’t echolocate in air, the must have the water medium in order to do so. For another, water is much denser than air. So? Well, because these mammals are adapted for water, so are their internal organs. When placed on land for long periods of time, dolphins experience internal bruising due to the increased “weight” that they experience relative to their weight experienced in water (think how fast you fall in air versus water). Another thing to consider is body temperature. Dolphins, like all mammals, are warm-blooded and so maintain a regular body temperature, theirs being 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Water happens to have a much higher heat capacity than air, and so body temperature regulation is adapted for water, and would change in air. One thing that doesn’t occur, however, is desiccation. Dolphins don’t “dry out”. So there you have, a general set of reasons for why they haven’t yet taken over the world.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to post photos or videos until I go home, as the camera simply does not like the cord I have for transferring said photos and videos. I promise to upload them as soon as I arrive back to the Tundra.
Dolphins, much like humans, are very social creatures. Richard Leakey previously studied dolphin intelligence, and came to the conclusion that intelligence is primarily defined by the social complexity of a being. That is, are the animals able to communicate through various emotive means, whether the social interaction is one of foraging, protecting, playing, or learning? Dolphins have a great capacity of learning from one another; it is often the case that one dolphin can be taught a complex behavior and easily teach it to another without the trainer’s help. The ability to recognize a new behavior, isolate its environmental conditions and perform it perfectly without having to be taught by the trainer that requested the behavior is quite astounding.
Dolphins group hunt, creating “bubbles” in the wild, where they work together to pool schools of fish into one area and then take turns alternating between guarding the bubble’s integrity and nabbing a fish for themselves. The ability to communicate successfully allows them to not only trap prey, but also to keep the prey at bay so that feeding time doesn’t become a free-for-all. While sheer brain mass may be an indicator of intelligence, it is not always true that larger brains mean higher thinking. What must be considered is the encephalization quotient of an animal, or the relative size of the brain to the rest of the body. Our EQ is two times that of a dolphin, although a dolphin has a larger surface area due to complex infoldings of the cerebral tissue. This surface area essentially allows for neural function; the greater the area, the higher the function. That’s not to say that humans are smarter than dolphins or vice versa.
In fact, we shouldn’t think about it in terms of “smarter than” because our worlds are vastly different. Take, for example, a New Yorker out of New York and drop them off in a jungle somewhere. Chances are they won’t last long without some help from the locals. Now, take someone from that same jungle and plop them down in New York. Again, they won’t find themselves having an easy time without the help of a person that understands their surroundings intimately. It is believed that the higher cerebral surface area in dolphins is crucial to the variance in environment from us. While we live in a world where we generally walk on two feet on flat surfaces to get places, dolphins utilize their 3-D surroundings to the greatest degree. They don’t just simply swim in straight lines or take underwater sidewalks to where they want to go: they have to be able to navigate in a highly variant environment.
Specifically, it’s the neocortex that’s larger in dolphins; this part of the brain makes up 98% of the cortex in dolphins and only 67% in humans. The neocortex is responsible for creativity and imagination, two crucial pieces to flexibility in a marine environment. The cerebellum in dolphins is larger relative to the rest of the brain than in humans. This is the central location for cognition and motor control, yet another crucial aspect of agile swimming. We often think of dolphins as having very acute senses due to their abilities to respond quickly to various stimuli. However, the visual centers of dolphins are actually less developed than in humans. Dolphins exhibit monoscopic vision, meaning that they can focus their eyes on different objects at the same time. However, while they can focus their left eye on one thing and the right on another, they are not capable of stereoscopic vision as exhibited in humans. They cannot focus in on one object with both eyes unless they are looking directly below them. Therefore, it is crucial to have some other mechanism by which to gauge distance from objects, their size, material, etc. It is the auditory center that gives dolphins such acuity in movement and awareness of surroundings. A dolphin’s ears are mere pinprick-sized holes on either side of the head. However, their ability to echolocate is actually what gives them such skill in movement without the use of vision. Clicks are sent out through the melon (area in the head) which focuses the clicks (acts as a kind of lens, so to speak). Lower frequency clicks allow the dolphin to gain a general sense of their surroundings, while higher frequencies allow for focusing in further on an object. Clicks are made every 50-120 milliseconds. The echo from an object bounces back and is registered in the hollow bones of the jaw and some fatty tissue surrounding the ears. This allows them to gauge not only where an object is spatially, but also its exact shape, and even density. Dolphins can echolocate anything from a rock to surgical pins from a fractured hip. They’re that good. In fact, they’re even able to teach each other behaviors without any visual aid.
A dolphin trained a behavior in a separate room can communicate with the untrained dolphin in the next pool without any visual cues how to perform the behavior. And the untrained dolphin will do it perfectly. Dolphins also often mimic behavior, both in humans and other dolphins. These behaviors have been noted to be as simple as a calf mimicking its mother’s breaching (jumping out of the water, usually because they’re upset) to a calf that, upon observing a man blowing smoke rings with a cigar, went to its mother to acquire milk and came back to the man to show him her milk rings she then blew into the water.
Now that your mind’s blown, we’ll go right in that direction: blowholes! Despite general belief, dolphins don’t have vocal chords. They produce all the sounds they make through nasal sacs and sinus passages. Sounds are made through the blowhole, not the mouth, although the mouth may open and move in order to alter pitch of a sound. The blowhole is used for breathing; dolphins do not breathe through their mouth ever. In fact, their throat remains closed off unless receiving food and acts kind of like a sphincter muscle to prevent water from going in. When a dolphin breathes, it always exhales before it inhales in order to blow out any water that may be resting on top of the hole. Dolphins communicate through whistles and clicks, heard through the blowhole.
Dolphins have signature whistles that allow other dolphins to identify them, which is useful when communicating information to other dolphins (in case they want to trash talk, which believe me, they do) and to keep track of genetic relationships to prevent inbreeding. Signature whistles are used much like we use names and can be altered depending on the situation at hand. For example, consider how a child says “Mom” when they’re asking a question. Now consider how that same word sounds when the child is terrified of something. The same idea applies for dolphins; trainers will often see mothers suddenly take off to attend to a calf that seems fine, and yet it has changed the signature whistle to say, “I’m hungry” or “I’m stuck”. This seems to be the primary way that dolphins communicate emotions, as well as through body language. However, unlike humans, dolphins cannot change their facial expression. Their “happiness” is rather perpetual, as their jawlines tend to slant slightly upward to give the appearance of a smile. As humans, it’s ingrained into us that this facial expression should be associated with joy, complacency, satisfaction, and yet in dolphins it cannot be used as a signal for emotion.
I asked a question today that I thought might be received with odd looks, “Aside from the fact that dolphins have no limbs, what prevents them from being terrestrial mammals?” Actually, the answer is quite interesting. For one matter, dolphins can’t echolocate in air, the must have the water medium in order to do so. For another, water is much denser than air. So? Well, because these mammals are adapted for water, so are their internal organs. When placed on land for long periods of time, dolphins experience internal bruising due to the increased “weight” that they experience relative to their weight experienced in water (think how fast you fall in air versus water). Another thing to consider is body temperature. Dolphins, like all mammals, are warm-blooded and so maintain a regular body temperature, theirs being 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Water happens to have a much higher heat capacity than air, and so body temperature regulation is adapted for water, and would change in air. One thing that doesn’t occur, however, is desiccation. Dolphins don’t “dry out”. So there you have, a general set of reasons for why they haven’t yet taken over the world.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to post photos or videos until I go home, as the camera simply does not like the cord I have for transferring said photos and videos. I promise to upload them as soon as I arrive back to the Tundra.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Where It All Begins
Day 1: The Animal Training Saga Continues
Six-thirty in the morning is a lovely time for sunrises, morning walks, a moment of self-reflection, meditation and…driving on the icy roads of Northern Michigan. This is where the animal training saga continues; on back roads and blizzardy highways, with my sister squinting ahead at the open road as the wipers sweep back and forth across the already-dry windshield.
“Are you going to turn those off?” I asked.
“No,” she said. I fell asleep to their rhythmic fwwp, fwwp and awoke to find myself curbside at the Grand Rapids Regional Airport. It was time to embark on chapter two of my journey. It was time for dolphins. Inside the airport the attendant at the Delta check-in counter gave me a sideways glance that says, “It must be your lucky day” as I placed my pre-weighed bag onto the scale. 49 pounds. No, 50. If it weren’t for my father I’d be lost in this world, forgetting the essential things in life, like weighing your luggage before you leave the house so your attendant can give you meaningful looks for your pre-meditated precision. I lugged what would be all of my possessions for the next month over to the TSA officer standing by the machine that seemed to simply eat suitcases whole. As he rattled off his spiel and I denied all possession of firearms, fireworks, lighters, explosives and such, I said a little prayer to the luggage gods hoping this wouldn’t be the unfortunate day some idiot lost my suitcase. I rounded the corner to head toward security and was met head-on with a less cringe-worthy unfortunate scenario. You always wonder what jerk caused the security line to wind out into the food court when it’s your turn to wait in line. Someone smuggling exotic snakes in their pants, forgot to put their indispensable lotion in their suitcase, etc. It ranges from psychotic genius to negligent traveler in my mind. As I stood in line and stared longingly at the closed Pizza Hut only steps away from me, I noticed what I like to call a “creeper”. Not someone who’s creepy, but rather someone that encroaches on your space in an incremental manner, inches at a time, until…they’re breathing down your neck and you wish they’d chewed some gum before deciding to invade your personal space. I moved forward with the line, she moved forward and then some. Finally I looked over to inspect what I was dealing with. She was no older than twenty, dyed hair, Coach bag, big diamond earrings. Tapping her foot incessantly as if this line was just the last darn straw in her patience hat. And it was.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
“San Francisco. My flight departs at 10:10.” It was 9:45. So, the foot-tapping was warranted, as was the creeping.
“You should just cut everyone,” I said.
“I tried that, but the guy got all pissed,” she replied.
“Just go person to person and ask if everyone’s okay with it. He can’t stop you from doing that.” She sighed.
“I hit a fox on the way here. Busted my radiator. I had to take a cab here.” She said it as if all cabs were hot-beds for cockroaches and heathens alike. “It has been a shit day.”
“Geez, I’m sorry,” I said. “I think you’ll make it though. You can cut me.”
“Thanks,” she said, rolling her eyes. I think this was aimed towards the situation and not my offer…I think. Long story short, she got through security and found herself waiting at the gate for a flight that had been delayed. It all seems to always work out in the end, some just end up with higher blood pressure by the time they get there.
On the plane I got stuck next to a sigher. A sigher with bad breath. Really bad breath. Every five minutes he’d sigh, and by some miraculous feat of diffusion his breath would be up my nose despite the space between us. So it goes. The next plane I got three seats to myself. Proof that the world maintains some semblance of balance.
I arrived at Miami airport well-rested and ready to begin the next leg of the journe: my first Greyhound Bus ever. Now, to found the bus stop…
After asking four unsuspecting people who looked to have some authority of the place, I came up with two things: 1) the bus stop is at concourse E 2) the bus stop is too far to walk to. And yet, I walked to concourse E. Now started the chain of confusion. I walked to the public transportation office to find the desk unattended and a man punching and screaming at a ticket machine in the corner. Giving up on that option, I finally hailed a taxi after a man told me the walk would be too far. A man from Pakistan drove me to the station where upon entering I was greeted with a roomful of glazed stares that all rested on one cumulative thought: you don’t belong here. I took my place in the corner of the room and waited. When the bus arrived I followed the Mick Jagger look-alike aboard and took my place at the front of the bus. The woman two seats away from me picked up her cell phone and began to ramble on in Russian. I waited for the doors to close and read a book until there was no more light. Then, I slept. When I arrived in Key Largo I called Jessica, one of the trainers, who came to pick me up. As we drove down Allen Avenue to the house where I’d be living I noticed something wonderful. It was too dark to see where they were, but there was the subtle scent of lilacs as we drove down the road. Parked in my landlady’s overhang garage was a white Mustang convertible. This is likely where my dad will get jealous and pretend that he doesn’t want a Mustang, doesn’t want to be golfing in Florida and doesn’t wish his daughter didn’t pick such a damned expensive school so he could rent a nice place to escape the cold Michigan winters. And this would also be the place where my mom lets out an envious groan as I tell her that not a block away is a canal where you can sit and watch manatees swim.
Judy, my hostess for the month, opened the door and two little terriers ran out to greet me. Judy is almost exactly what I expected: dyed blonde hair, a permanent scent of Virginia Slims marinated into her dark leathery skin. She’s got those legs that don’t seem to quite match the rest of her body, long and skinny and without much curve so that they seem to disappear into her loose short shorts. I was promptly introduced to Lil Bit and Curtis, the two exuberant terriers bouncing at my feet while intermittently pausing to scratch themselves. I suspect that they have fleas. Curtis is ten years old and has cataracts in both eyes. He has also already taken quite a liking to me, as he is sound asleep in my bed as I type this. Lil Bit is not so little. She was supposed to be just seven pounds but is a whopping fourteen instead. I suspect that her fleas are much worse than Curtis’.
While I was promised wireless internet and cable I have found that both promises have come up short, as I have a DSL cord that is only available to me in a less than reclusive office and one channel which is currently playing “The Bachelor”. And yet, I have a pile of books on my bedstand. There never was such a wonderful persuasion to read as the absence of technology.
Tomorrow will be my first day at the facility, eight in the morning, bright and early. I have no idea what to expect except one thing: it sure as hell will beat winter in Michigan.
More to come...
Six-thirty in the morning is a lovely time for sunrises, morning walks, a moment of self-reflection, meditation and…driving on the icy roads of Northern Michigan. This is where the animal training saga continues; on back roads and blizzardy highways, with my sister squinting ahead at the open road as the wipers sweep back and forth across the already-dry windshield.
“Are you going to turn those off?” I asked.
“No,” she said. I fell asleep to their rhythmic fwwp, fwwp and awoke to find myself curbside at the Grand Rapids Regional Airport. It was time to embark on chapter two of my journey. It was time for dolphins. Inside the airport the attendant at the Delta check-in counter gave me a sideways glance that says, “It must be your lucky day” as I placed my pre-weighed bag onto the scale. 49 pounds. No, 50. If it weren’t for my father I’d be lost in this world, forgetting the essential things in life, like weighing your luggage before you leave the house so your attendant can give you meaningful looks for your pre-meditated precision. I lugged what would be all of my possessions for the next month over to the TSA officer standing by the machine that seemed to simply eat suitcases whole. As he rattled off his spiel and I denied all possession of firearms, fireworks, lighters, explosives and such, I said a little prayer to the luggage gods hoping this wouldn’t be the unfortunate day some idiot lost my suitcase. I rounded the corner to head toward security and was met head-on with a less cringe-worthy unfortunate scenario. You always wonder what jerk caused the security line to wind out into the food court when it’s your turn to wait in line. Someone smuggling exotic snakes in their pants, forgot to put their indispensable lotion in their suitcase, etc. It ranges from psychotic genius to negligent traveler in my mind. As I stood in line and stared longingly at the closed Pizza Hut only steps away from me, I noticed what I like to call a “creeper”. Not someone who’s creepy, but rather someone that encroaches on your space in an incremental manner, inches at a time, until…they’re breathing down your neck and you wish they’d chewed some gum before deciding to invade your personal space. I moved forward with the line, she moved forward and then some. Finally I looked over to inspect what I was dealing with. She was no older than twenty, dyed hair, Coach bag, big diamond earrings. Tapping her foot incessantly as if this line was just the last darn straw in her patience hat. And it was.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
“San Francisco. My flight departs at 10:10.” It was 9:45. So, the foot-tapping was warranted, as was the creeping.
“You should just cut everyone,” I said.
“I tried that, but the guy got all pissed,” she replied.
“Just go person to person and ask if everyone’s okay with it. He can’t stop you from doing that.” She sighed.
“I hit a fox on the way here. Busted my radiator. I had to take a cab here.” She said it as if all cabs were hot-beds for cockroaches and heathens alike. “It has been a shit day.”
“Geez, I’m sorry,” I said. “I think you’ll make it though. You can cut me.”
“Thanks,” she said, rolling her eyes. I think this was aimed towards the situation and not my offer…I think. Long story short, she got through security and found herself waiting at the gate for a flight that had been delayed. It all seems to always work out in the end, some just end up with higher blood pressure by the time they get there.
On the plane I got stuck next to a sigher. A sigher with bad breath. Really bad breath. Every five minutes he’d sigh, and by some miraculous feat of diffusion his breath would be up my nose despite the space between us. So it goes. The next plane I got three seats to myself. Proof that the world maintains some semblance of balance.
I arrived at Miami airport well-rested and ready to begin the next leg of the journe: my first Greyhound Bus ever. Now, to found the bus stop…
After asking four unsuspecting people who looked to have some authority of the place, I came up with two things: 1) the bus stop is at concourse E 2) the bus stop is too far to walk to. And yet, I walked to concourse E. Now started the chain of confusion. I walked to the public transportation office to find the desk unattended and a man punching and screaming at a ticket machine in the corner. Giving up on that option, I finally hailed a taxi after a man told me the walk would be too far. A man from Pakistan drove me to the station where upon entering I was greeted with a roomful of glazed stares that all rested on one cumulative thought: you don’t belong here. I took my place in the corner of the room and waited. When the bus arrived I followed the Mick Jagger look-alike aboard and took my place at the front of the bus. The woman two seats away from me picked up her cell phone and began to ramble on in Russian. I waited for the doors to close and read a book until there was no more light. Then, I slept. When I arrived in Key Largo I called Jessica, one of the trainers, who came to pick me up. As we drove down Allen Avenue to the house where I’d be living I noticed something wonderful. It was too dark to see where they were, but there was the subtle scent of lilacs as we drove down the road. Parked in my landlady’s overhang garage was a white Mustang convertible. This is likely where my dad will get jealous and pretend that he doesn’t want a Mustang, doesn’t want to be golfing in Florida and doesn’t wish his daughter didn’t pick such a damned expensive school so he could rent a nice place to escape the cold Michigan winters. And this would also be the place where my mom lets out an envious groan as I tell her that not a block away is a canal where you can sit and watch manatees swim.
Judy, my hostess for the month, opened the door and two little terriers ran out to greet me. Judy is almost exactly what I expected: dyed blonde hair, a permanent scent of Virginia Slims marinated into her dark leathery skin. She’s got those legs that don’t seem to quite match the rest of her body, long and skinny and without much curve so that they seem to disappear into her loose short shorts. I was promptly introduced to Lil Bit and Curtis, the two exuberant terriers bouncing at my feet while intermittently pausing to scratch themselves. I suspect that they have fleas. Curtis is ten years old and has cataracts in both eyes. He has also already taken quite a liking to me, as he is sound asleep in my bed as I type this. Lil Bit is not so little. She was supposed to be just seven pounds but is a whopping fourteen instead. I suspect that her fleas are much worse than Curtis’.
While I was promised wireless internet and cable I have found that both promises have come up short, as I have a DSL cord that is only available to me in a less than reclusive office and one channel which is currently playing “The Bachelor”. And yet, I have a pile of books on my bedstand. There never was such a wonderful persuasion to read as the absence of technology.
Tomorrow will be my first day at the facility, eight in the morning, bright and early. I have no idea what to expect except one thing: it sure as hell will beat winter in Michigan.
More to come...
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