An animal within me ?

                                                                                                                                         

I got kind of stopped recently when a friend of my asked:  "If you'd be an animal, which animal would you be?"  

Well - that’s not too rare that people play this kind of game. It’s fun to think of what would be the one character I do admire in some specific animal species.  

What would be your answer?   

Which is the animal that dwells within you?  

My answer would most likely and quite naturally be  a dolphin ….or a cat. On the other hand an eagle is in top three as well. It would be fascinating  – quite majestic.  

Who wouldn’t like these animals? 

Of course - we could think of it from a completely different point of view; would anyone like to be a skunk or a cockroach … or any other - not so popular nor majestic animal?

 Can a wolf wear a sheep’s clothing?  

Often times we hear parables of how we, or our caracteristics, are compared to an animal - or to be more spesific; what is believed to be their characteristics behaviour.  

Just to give an example:  ”Your stuborn or dum as a donkey …or you've got such a great memory – just like an elephant.”  

This kind of comparison has been in our culture already for ages. One of the earliest could be the one just above referring to: A wolf in sheeps clothes. Some say it’s from Aesop’s fables but most like it origins from bible of a  sermon by Jesus: Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly
they are ravening wolves (Gospel of Matthew 7:15, King James Version) 

This just tells us how long we humans have been using these kind of parables  - basicly as long as we have been invoved with animals. 

Many animals have great skills and the point for them to possess such one's is because of their survival. They have them in order to survive better in their natural environment. Fox is considered to be very smart and cunning. They need those skills to be able to hunt and survive more successfully. 
Many laws within animal kingdom are based on energy efficiency and by this way those skils promote the survival of that particularly individual, a population, family, pod or even a species.   The less an individual has to spend energy in accomplishing food for itself or it’s offspring – the better they will cope in their surrounding environment. Competition is an ongoing state of life. 

When we value different characteristics of animal species in this manner, we are using anthropomorphism, by doing so we reflect our social, religious, educational etc. image or beliefs to the assumed characteristics of those specific species in question. 

But what is the animalistic instinct within us?  

Some may say it’s the thriving force we are experiencing in different situation during our lives; the adrenaline boost within us. The beast or the animal within us. 

What if we just are plane humans? Whom happen to be under the same rules or principles behaviour wise as any other life form of the animal kingdom? 

Behaviourism raise its head in human psychology in the early 50’ and even earlier. Some scientists went pretty far with behaviourism; explaining our physical and emotional actions through principles or forces which mold our behaviour. Some of those statements were correct some just went “over the top”. 

It is true that in many ways we do act very much in the same way as any other animal would do in a similar situation. And when we are discussing of them we do like to be anthropomorphic and pick up animal characteristics to describe our actions from the animal kingdom - especially if we think that it is somehow dignifying quality to us.

What if ?

...The 'animal within us' is something complete different to that what we usually think. I believe we are closer to animal behaviour sometimes when we are reacting to our environment in a ways as animals do when they get in such situation. When our behavior is trigged by a sudden stimuly.

Let’s think of frustration. 

What happens when we get frustrated? 
Everyone is familiar with the emotion of it.  We may start to magnify our reactions, our behaviour or wording in order to get out of the frustrated situation. 

Let's assume it’s a que or a closed door that we are facing and we cannot get forward in an assumed pace we anticipated we would. Very easily and quickly we’ll start to find solution how to get things progressing much faster or in the direction we anticipted things would proceed. Trying harder or trying to find a shortcut or a way to bypass the problem. The phenomenoms I am referring with these simple examples is called extinction and extinction bust.  

If an animal does not get the reinforcement it usually gets by performing a familiar behaviour there is a tendency for the animal to get frustrated and as a consequence of that the behavior escalates into something different. The intention of this of course is to get the usual feedback (rewarding) or stimuli. The individual gets frustrated as it is not receiving the type of reinforcement it used to get. Frustration may lead into agression but also evnetually into "giving up".

The very same happens to us. If you bump into a closed door at your office, the one you open and walk through several times during the day, you’ll get a bit annoyed (frustration). You try again and again ...but the door doesn't open. The next thing is that you try harder (escalation of your effort). You may try once or twice more, try your keys etc. but eventually it can lead into giving up and finding another way to get to your destination.  There are several ways to get to the destination but what really happens at that moment when you don’t get your reinforcement – ie. going to the other room or getting stuck in a que. 

This is a very common in animal behavior. Eventually if nothing helps the animal gradually gives up the task. It is not worth to waist any further energy to this task and the behaviour dies out as time passes, or some other form of behaviour is formed. If the final result of this type of lack of reinforcement is the diminishing of the behaviour then the procedure is called extinction. The term describes extremely well the process of a gradual death of that behaviour. In animal training it is often times used in trying to rid of non-wanted behaviors. Other term that could be used in a bit similar situation is; learned helplessness. This procedure however almost always has an aversive stimulus present in order to make the behavior diminish.. so it is actually a bit of a  different story.  

The animal within us. 

As fancy it would be to possess some awesome characteristics of an eagle or other majestic animal... Maybe – just maybe - the animal within us is something much more common or it is something of an “everyday character”. I believe we all are under many similar rules of behavioural forces as any other individual in the animal kingdom of our beloved planet.  

It can be just like previously told one - or maybe the aimal within us is a tendor parenting animals express to their offspring. So, whether you like it or not, our behaviour resembles in many small nuances the one’s animals do act on similar circumstances. 

I am fascinated of each and every species – how they behave and how they’ve adapted and evolved into the ones they now are. I don't mind if I act upon in similar ways.

So - Let’s respect all animals, weather they live next to us or within us, after all we are to cultivate and keep & take care of the nature in this ball, we all share. 

Kai Mattsson 

Animal behaviorist 

Meritime Consulting 

www.meritime.net 

Find Meritime on facebook 

https://www.facebook.com/Meritime-345171735503394/

Let’s focus on what we want to accomplish

Many times I hear how some animal owners are annoyed of behaviors which are performed by their pets; dog or any other animal.

“How can I fix that barging or screaming?”, or hopping or whatever it is they’d like to change at that time.

I believe that often times we focus more on so called “wrong” behaviors our animals are performing than to the proper ones.  Therefore we are actually giving more attention to the misbehaved patterns than to the ones we’d consider to be the good behaviors. In short we are … yes; reinforcing the behaviors we consider being the bad ones.
Great ! That is exactly what we don't want to do! The balance of our communication and interaction is gradually getting more and more into the negative side of reinforcement.

Zooming into something we actually don't want to reinforce

I do many times refer to small children when talking about animal training. We humans are of course more complex when it comes to behavior management but still there are many-many things common with us and animals. How some of our basic behaviors can be modified is following often similar trends as what we are using in animal training. Many of the animal training “tips” or methods are after all from inventions in human psychological research which have been studied on us humans.

I believe that small kids are reactive just like animals are. If there’s something they don’t like - they will surely show it instantly. The same goes for the things they like. Make a game out of cleaning their toys and you are winner of the situation.  I believe the salt in working or being with kids and animals is the enthusiasm and intensity they react upon on our feedback. Therefore, in my opinion, it is far more fruitful to try to redirect their attention into something that is interesting and which makes them focus on a positive way of acting. It is also far better to get there a little bit in advance than a little too late. I believe many of you have experienced this.  If you know your animal well enough you can tell if it is going to bark or jump.

Absolutely the best way to correct that behavior is when it has not yet happened!

Does that surprise you?

Well this is true. If you can anticipate correctly i.e. you dogs or bird’s behavior - you can modify its behavior before the misbehaving occurs. This methodology can be found in most articles and literature concerning any kind of aggressive behavior management.  Just redirect the attention of your pet into something more acceptable when you see the first small hints or the "head lifting" of the unwanted behavior.  On the other hand we have to be careful not to anticipate too much as the animals tend to take advantage of our predictable behaviors. Balance between these two therefore plays a key role in finding the proper way of behavior management in this kind of situations.

Quite some time ago I was listening to one psychologist and I think the best thought she gave to me was that when we are focusing ourselves on some action or emotion, we are at the same time emphasizing our energy to that state of mind. In general I don’t like to talk about energy when I’m talking about animal training but there are a few exceptions. This one is one of them.

 I believe that animal training in many cases is actually redirecting the attention of the animal in question to something that will avoid the execution of the disliked misbehavior. By paying our attention to these kinds of disliked behaviors we are at the same time focusing our energy on that particular action.

Anticipation is very important together with successive approximation.

Let me tell you an example from our cat at home.  She is a sort of a wild one as she was an orphan for quite some time after she was born. Therefore she never fully got marked to humans at her early days. I knew that there would be occasions when I’d have to transport her by car for quite some distance. The trip would take more than 6 hour. By using good approximations, taking short trips with her i.e. to the nearby grocery occasionally I managed to have her successfully in my  car also on those long trips. I even have taken that “wildish” little fellow in a plane to fly small distances.

In short I focused on a behavior I wanted her to do. I focused on a calm response of being in a car for a short period of time. By using a little anticipation and approximation one can make a great difference. Gradually we extended the time of transportation and ended the trips on a high note. I managed to keep her in good comfort level and therefore I was not forced to direct my energy into that particular type of bad behavior.

Try it and you’ll fall in love with this simple way of behavior management.

 Kai Mattsson

@KaiMattsson

Meritime Consulting, Finland

www.meritime.net
Find Meritime on Facebook; 
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Meritime/345171735503394

 

What makes an exceptional animal trainer?

What are good animal trainer made of?

That’s a question I’ve been asking myself several times. 

What are the skills or abilities that make one a good animal trainer? Or actually I should say an exceptional animal trainer?  Who has the ability to mold the animal nature into the direction we humans want it to be formed?

I’ve had several discussions on this topic with my colleagues.  We have listed several skills that an exceptional animal trainer should possess; among them are patience, creativity, innovativity, joyfulness, being consistent, playful mind, visionary etc. All these describe the quality features of a good animal trainer. But as we know there are trainers and then there are those trainers who have something extra in their relationship with animals. What is it that makes the difference?

Good trainer has to know the animal and be aware of the circumstances the animals are exposed to; environmental wise and the reinforcements they are affected by. Surely we must know the ins and outs of animal behaviorism and the geometrics of animal behavior management, i.e.  different forces that  affect the animals in our care. How are we capable of changing the balance in reinforcements?

Basically, that’s all it is, the balance of reinforcement.  How do get our dog or any other animal to behave the way we’d like it to behave.  We just need to find a way to give a stronger feedback, reinforcement, than the feedback, enrichment or stimulus the animal´s environment is providing to it.

Needless to say, the training methods have to be based on positive reinforcement and operant conditioning. When we are talking about positive way of animal training we should remember that it doesn’t mean that everything is allowed for the animal in question. It is just the way we handle the animals, whether they are dogs, cats, birds, horses, otters, dolphins or rhinos etc. The idea is to redirect the focus of the animal with positive and more powerful secondary or primary reinforcement into a trail of success.

But let’s get back to the original question. In my opinion what makes an exceptional animal trainer is the ability of closeness.

We all love and cherish our animals. Especial attention is given to domestic animals because we spend a great deal of time with them. The closeness I am thinking of is not the same as love. Of course we have to love our animals and get involved with them but love is a bit different matter than closeness. What I mean by closeness is:  all the quality features listed above combined with sensitivity, intuition and capability to read the small signals animals in our care are giving to us. It’s neither supernatural nor superstitious but a way to read the animal´s motions and signals, to be sensitive to what they might do next and to be just a little bit ahead of them - as no animal trainer should be surprised in training situation by our animal companions.

Kai Mattsson

https://twitter.com/KaiMattsson

 

Meritime Consulting

Tmi Meritime

www.meritime.net

Find Meritime on Facebook;

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Meritime/345171735503394

Why Don’t I just get a dog?

Why Don’t I just get a dog?

This is a question that popped into my mind as I again started to train another bizarre animal species.

I’ve been now involved with animal care and training about thirty years. Never in my life have I owned a dog. This does not mean that I would not have been working with one but it seems that I’m bound to work with some more exotic animals.

Most of my experience is related to aquatic environment; like seals, dolphins etc. Lately I've been more involved with domestic animals; ponies, bunnies and also birds.

I do find it interesting to get involved with challenging tasks. Once you get to the goal it is so very rewarding. However sometimes I come to think that why on earth do I have to collect so challenging training tasks? Why not just work with a dog?

I’m sorry for the word “just” – it’s not to give any discredit to any dog trainer / -training. Sometimes it just feels that it would be so much easier.

Banded Archerfish

Anyhow, the latest training task is; Banded archerfish. On the other hand this is one of the very first animals I’ve trained in my early days as aquarist.

Banded archerfish is best known for its ability to spit a jet of water to "shoot down" prey, like small insects or flies. Banded archerfish have mouths adapted to spit jets of water over distance, usually to knock prey into the water. The banded archerfish shoots the jet of water by raising its tongue against the roof of its mouth, forming a tube. The opercula then close quickly, pressurizing water along the tube. 

The shooting ability is genetically imprinted in this fish species but the accuracy of a “shot” is a learned ability. It is even said that they can hit a moving target. Shooting distance can be up to appr. 150 cm.

This school of fishes I started to work with is situated on a public aquarium here in Finland (Särkänniemi Oy, Tampere). At the starting moment none of the fish school individuals were using their special ability to catch prey this way. Often times animals tend to behave on energy based principle. What this means is that they act on a way which is most energy effective way to satisfy their primary needs. Especially this applies for hunting behavior; if there is a way of getting food with less effort and smaller amount of energy loss, it is of course a better option for the animal in question for its survival.

In other words this school of banded archerfishes had been kind of “spoiled”. They have always been fed to the water. It’s been easy for them just be at spot where the food is been delivered. There is no need for using the shooting ability as food is available also without doing so.

The very first experience that I now have with them is reinforcing this theory. I did a feeding platform for getting them spit water to get the food. The platform is made of long ice-cream spoons. Nothing happened during the first trial.

Primary forces

Hunger is a very strong primary force. It even makes some of us humans steal, in order to get our needs to be satisfied. With this case I’ll be using it also on a controlled way. I will not leave those poor fish starving. I believe I can achieve the ultimate goal of “waking up” their unique ability, just by transforming the regular daily feeding schedule to later moment during the day. What the fishes will get is an instant reward of shooting the prey – the lure I've made them in the spoons. This food is available for them earlier during the day - they just need to make a small effort of getting it.

By doing this I’m actually trying to get them frustrated and seek for nourishment from the environment. This is very natural hunting phenomena and it is indeed enriching their environment. So by adding this type of behavioral need in their environment I am getting them mental exercise, especially as this school of fishes has not been using their shooting ability.

At the beginning I used a bit of luring by feeding these fishes underneath the spoons I made for the purpose. I’m also keeping the feeding spot at the beginning in the very same place so that they will understand the connection between food and spoons faster. I am also observing all activity of the fish school because I want to reinforce most of their effort of making the shot by tossing some food underneath the spoons every time any of the individuals is making an effort. At the very beginning the spoons are almost touching the water surface, later once the behavior of shooting the water has been established I will take the  spoons further away from the surface.

Frustration

Frustration is a difficult matter to be handled once we are using it on animal training. You don’t want to get the animals too frustrated as it will most likely lead into some form of aggression. Even after three days of this exercise with banded archerfish I can already see some territorial or dominant behavior between the fishes in the school.  However if you are capable of using it a properly small amount of frustration your creating a phenomenon called extinction burst.  

Extinction burst is a short timeline in the animal’s behavior when it is trying a bit harder to accomplish the reinforcement it is used to get by performing a certain magnitude of behavior. This is something that is very much programmed into any of us, but it is also a great tool in animal behavior management. However one should be rather talented when we are using this kind of method in molding animal behavior.

By restraining a bit the food intake to these animals I’m convinced that they will be affected by the previously mentioned phenomenon. This will make them search for different ways of getting the reinforcement. Actually after three days of exercise this has been proven to be true – some, not all, individuals of the school of these fishes have started to spit on my lure (the spoon with food in it). And just by the day five I could already raise the spoon appr. 10 cm above the water surface.

I also got a very good experience on how powerful the spitting of water with these rather small fishes is; while I was putting some minced shrimp on the spoon I was shot by one of the fish right at my eye. It was striking how powerful the shot was! No wonder they can get i.e. flies dropped into water by this way.

The process of training this natural ability to this school of fishes is still, while I am writing this article, in the very beginning stage. However the progress after only a few days is extreme – not necessarily surprising but rather vast. The task is to get most of the fishes involved in using their ability to use this preying method. Also one of the clear target is to get the target further away from the fishes so that they have to make shot longer, as they do have according to the literature an ability to make the shot up to 1,5 meters.

This will be an interesting task and if you find it also interesting you can follow the progress on Meritime (my consulting company) Facebook profile at; https://www.facebook.com/pages/Meritime/345171735503394

Update & followup 09/2020

I bumped on this blogtext in my computer and though that this one definitely needs an update & a follow up report.

Just a quick note first: 

- I still don't have a dog of my own even though I've been a hole lot more into dog training but also in zoo animal training & welfare.

But - to the point:

So we now living  - the bizzare year 2020 - and lost has happened on this training task since this text was written. 

At the time of writing the previous text I had just recently started the training protocol - and like any training task it did have it's "up's & down's" but eventually the whole procedure was a success.

Most - almost all - of that school of archer fishes learned this innate behaviour of theirs. This was such  a success that we added it into our weekly program for public to see how faraging of this amazing species happens. 

An interesting notification was also that as I explained previously; at the beginning I was reinforcing almost every attempt of "shooting" from the fishes in order to get them the most reinforcement of their attempts or a successful behaviors.

However in some point I gradually stopped it to see how the behaviour had proceeded and how reliable it was. At this point and ever after that - it was not always the individual "shooting" that got the food reinforcement or all of it, sometime the one misses it completely.

This actually is brilliant!

- at first this may seem rather unfair: The one which is doing all the "work" is getting less or nothing !!

But this is just how it works in the nature ... AND - it is the very same what we as professional trainers do; we don't reinforce every single attempt or behavior - BUT; we keep them on variable schedule of reinforcement, which is know to motivate animals the most. 

So the nature of this type of feeding and foraging behavior in archer fishes is actually sustaining a high level of motivation because of the fact that the primary reinforcement is on a very variable schedule for each individual.

At the moment the animals are in about 30-50 cm distance from the water surface to hit the target, which in our case is adequate and suitable and clearly shows what the prey capabilities are of these archer fishes.

We are also in the second generation of fishes in our setup. Those are not of our own rearing but of individuals imported to the aquarium. What is interesting with them is that in their case I didn't do any training with them (..or very minimum of it). I just wanted to see how well they can mimic the older and more talented fishes. Mimicry takes longer time - as there is often some other individual which is capable of "shooting", so there is not such a great demand of using this talent.

..but - all in all - the younger generation has also learned to use their innate behavior pretty well.

So - mimicry as a learning procedure has now been proven also with fish species.

This has been an interesting journey and experience; All I can say is that take the challenge to find innovative ways of training all types of animals without any prejudices in the tasks ahead.  

Enjoy

Sincerely

Kai Mattsson

animal behaviorist

www.meritime.net

https://twitter.com/KaiMattsson

  

Sustainable & renewable

Tässä pari Lontoon murteen trendisanaa, joita kuulee nykyisin lähes kaiken mahdollisen asian yhteydessä. Auringon tuottama energia tosin on mitä suurimmassa määrin juurikin mitä nuo sanat kuvaavat. Suomenkielestä voitaisiin vielä litanjaan lisätä lähienergia, kestäväkehitys, hiilijalanjälki jne. 

Nyt kokemuksia omasta mikrotuotantolaitoksen on kohta vuoden ajalta ja täytyy sanoa ihan vilpittömästi, että kokemukset ovat pääsääntöisesti positiivisia. Se mikä varmasti on ollut hyvä asia, on  onnistuneen valinnan teko  laitteiston mitoituksessa; juuri sopiva omiin tarpeisiin. Pääsääntöisesti varsinkin kesäaikaan tuotanto vastaa hyvin oman taloutemme kulutusta. Aurinkoisen kesän saldona on myös jäänyt sähköä verkkoon syötettäväksi. 

Kokonaistuotantona 5 kWp:n mikrotuotantolaitoksestamme kesäkuukausina (kesä-, heinä-, elokuu) on 1916 kWh. Syyskuun parhaina päivinä olemme vielä päässeet jopa 27,5kWh vuorokausituotantoon. Ehkä hieman yllättävää oli, että heinäkuun jälkeen paras kuukausi sähköntuotannon suhteen oli tänä vuonna huhtikuu. Kesällä tietysti pienkuluttajaa lämmittää sähkölaskujen loppusumma, mikä tänä kesänä on ollut laskettavissa kymmenissä euroissa. 

Kävin tässä taannoin ulkomailla CMS (Convention for Migratory Species) organisaation alaisen pienvalassuojelusopimuksen kokouksessa (Ascobans). Tuolla nuo alussa mainitsemani Lontoon-kielisestä muotisanat olit käytössä varsin laajasti ja ehkäpä jopa asianmukaisesti. Keskustelu polkuili erilaisten uusitutuvien lähienergiamuotojen lomassa sujuvasti ja näkökulmana oli niiden vaikutus eläinkunnan biodiversiteettiin ja elinympäristöön, muuttoreitteihin ja niin edelleen.  

Paljon ylistetyn tuulienergiaa vaikutukset luontoon ja eläimiin ovatkin yllättävän suuret. Tuulivoimalapuistoja rakennettaessa mm. merialueille niiden sivuvaikutukset voivat olla hyvin merkittävät ekosysteemille varsinkin rakennusvaiheessa, rakentamisesta aiheutuvat melusaasteen sekä luonnontilaisen merenpohjan muokkaamisen kautta. Rakennettaessa tuulivoimalapuistoja olisi hyvä myös huomiota erilaiset muuttavat eläimet, tärkeimpänä tietysti muuttolinnut, joille tuulivoimalat varsinkin ovat osoittautuneet vaarallisiksi. Samalla tavoin isot tuulivoimalat ovat vaarallisia yhä hupenevalle lepakkokannalle Euroopassa. Niiden hyvä kaikuluotainaisti ei säästä niitä tuulivoimaloiden lavoilta. Lapojen kärjet pyöriessään kun liikkuvat parhaimmillaan lähes sadan km/h tuntivauhdilla. 

Toinen iso uusiutuvan energian lähde tulee lähitulevaisuudessa olemaan merestä saatava energia; vuorovesienergia, aaltoenergia tai erilaisia merivirtauksia hyväksi käyttävä turbiinienergia. Nämä energialähteet ovat vielä varsin uusia ja kehitteillä, niistä ei siis vielä ole juurikaan käyttökokemuksia eliöstöjen tai elinympäristöjen vaikutusten suhteen. Siksi tässä vaiheessa olisi erityisen tärkeää kiinnittää huomiota myös niihin seikkoihin joilla voitaisiin ennalta määritellä niiden aiheuttamia mahdollisia riskejä sijoituspaikkojen ja siellä elävien tai niiden kautta muuttavien eläinten suhteen. Erityisosaamista tarvittaisiin näiden alojen teolliseen suunnitteluun.  

Myös aurinkoenergiasata keskusteltiin samassa yhteydessä. Haittavaikutuksia ei vain juurikaan tullut mainituksi. Asia jäi sen verran mieltäni kiusaamaan, että menin seuraavalla tauolla lähemmin vielä keskustelemaan asiasta kokousta osin johtaneen CMS:n sihteeristön edustajan kanssa. Kysyin häneltä, tietääkö hän mitä haittavaikutuksia aurinkoenergialla on muuttaviin lajeihin tai luontoon ylipäätään. 

Hän meni hetkeksi varsin mietteliääksi ja vastasi lopulta, että hän ei osaa sano juurikaan mitään haittavaikutuksia luontoon täällä Euroopassa. Lähinnä hänelle tuli mieleen autiomaaseudut, joilla aurinkopaneeleja on käytetty suurissa määrin. Paneelit on asettelu osin kaaren muotoon, jolloin ne toimivat ikään kuin "suurennuslaseina" keräten yläpuolelleen kuumuutta. Kuumuus voi olla niin suuri, että sen yli lentävät linnut kirjaimellisesti pakahtuvat kuumuuteen pudoten lennosta maahan. 

Tästä huolimatta voidaan todeta, että aurinkovoima on sitä kaikkein luontoystävällisintä uusiutuvaa lähienergiaa.  

Ollaanpa vaikka siitäkin ylpeitä ja kiitollisia. 

Kai Mattsson 

www.meritime.net 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Meritime/345171735503394?ref=hl