CROCODILE TRAINING : PART THREE

“Ally come”

“Sit”

“Up”

“Stay”

“Turn”

“Sit”

“Up”

“Stay”

This was pretty much what I was doing with Ally now. The possibility of teaching crocodiles is the biggest inspiration to try out new things and do more. I was so amazed by the fact that they assess their immediate environment so well and figure out a way in which they get the maximum benefit. Survival instincts, I guess.  But is this instinctive behavior? In the captive environment, these crocs figured that they have best chances of survival if they “participate” and “perform” and so they do participate and perform. This is very similar to any animals with supposedly higher intelligence, including humans. This basically means that they are thinking and evaluating everything that is going on! Still instinctive behavior? Probably not! Definition of instinct is “an inborn complex behavior of a living organism that is not learned". Well, learning tricks that are completely unexpected and which sometimes include problem-solving skills disproves the age-old impression of crocs being highly instinctive animals.

With Ally, “sit”, “up” and  “stay” was looking a bit incomplete. So what would complete this string of commands? Ralf had now gone back to Germany. I was now on my own. I remember him saying “Don’t limit yourself. Crocs are very intelligent. They are smarter than you think they are”.

I saw a greater prospect in working with Ally; simple reason being that she is an American Alligator. They are one of the calmest species; more trustworthy and plus she is so cute! One day I was just imagining how cute she would look if she made (cute) jumps. Hey wait a minute, how about making her jump to complete that string of commands? Awesome idea!

"Ally jump"

It took her 4 days to learn jump and now it is one of the major attractions! Sometimes she misjudges the front-leg – hind-leg coordination and ends up making a really funny cute quarter-jump. I call them Alligator jumps.

Now the crocs were getting ample playtime in the form of enrichment activities but crocodile training is also a major management tool. Dangerous animals like crocs have to go through a lot of stress while being restrained for any concerned reasons like for e.g. Veterinary intervention. To make it smooth, crocs can be trained to enter specially designed wooden crates (boxes) with windows on the sides. These boxes are pretty compact entering which does not allow turning around in any ways. Once the croc goes in, you close the doors and do all the necessary checkups, medication, take samples for lab, etc. with no safety issues and minimal stress on the animal. In species like American Alligators, a lot of this is possible even without the crate! The trick is to desensitize them. Desensitizing is a procedure to take the animal’s physical comfort to such a level that it ignores and tolerates almost all physical contacts to its body. It is the same thing when you ‘calm down’ a freshly caught snake. It all starts by gently touching the body (safest part first) of a croc and slowly getting it used to it. Then gradually you try to cover as much as possible. A desensitized croc is way much easier to manage whenever there is an intervention needed and it is always better to be prepared for any such possibilities. With advanced desensitizing, you can also draw blood samples without physically restraining the croc! To give it a try, I started desensitizing Ally and now she allows me to do almost anything! It is really amazing how it works. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't tried it myself.

Desensitized Ally

My next target is to desensitize her to draw a blood sample. It will be so cool to maintain a health report that includes regular blood checks.

END OF PART THREE.

To be continued...

Eagle's paradise

Croc Bank has a large heronry of Egrets, Night herons and a few Cormorants. Bird watchers and enthusiasts who come here for a visit love the sight of these birds especially on trees of enclosure # 8 & 10, where there are maximum number of nests. 

Somebody actually compared this to 'snowflakes'!

It is a great sight for sure but we can seriously do better with less number of birds. I will get to why later in the article but what made them settle here? Firstly, they get an undue advantage living here. They don't have to go far or work hard for food. They raid the croc ponds for fishes, plus they also go for the leftover food of crocodiles. They have got enough 'shelter' in Croc Bank and there are no predators! They initially were using Croc Bank as a feeding ground but then looking at all the luxuries here, they started breeding. Now they breed throughout the year, though the peak breeding season is crazy. There are babies everywhere and the sound that they make. It is funny for the first 15 minutes or may be half an hour but surely not  throughout the day. And night! It gets a bit irritating then. A bit? REALLY IRRITATING.

Getting back to why they are a problem: All the fence walls of our tortoises off-exhibit enclosures are white, I mean spotless white; not with paint but... yes you guessed it right - with bird droppings. Most of the benches for visitors are also very often covered in white. When you have to go to the library from the education office or to the main office, you have to walk/run very tactfully, dodging the small white showers. On an average, you can get 'pooped' on about 2-3 times at least, everyday! The smell of the droppings (mainly ammonia) is blinding near the tortoise enclosures, especially after the first rains. The ammonia levels in some of the croc ponds are also way too high due to the constant  droppings. This is not good for the animals at all. But how do we tackle this problem?

On 16 September 2009 we got a striking answer from nature!

A Booted Eagle Aquila pennata with its catch!

I love Eagles!

By the way, we also get a weird and crazy answer from nature sometimes. Click on the answer to find out!

Crochameleon ----- Heard that before?

Our 2007 hatched Morelet's crocodile Crocodylus moreleti babies (10 in all) were out-growing their nursery enclosure. Soon five were transferred to one of the aquarium exhibits in ‘Turtle Haven’ to lower the density. After about 2-3 months post transfer, the two separate ‘gangs’ were showing a lot of difference in behavior. The ones in Turtle Haven were so much bolder now. They weren’t scared or stressed out when visitors go close to see them. This could be due to the constant exposure to people and now they just got used to it gradually. The ones in the nursery would just dive underwater when approached.

The Turtle Haven gang would look at me curiously every time I stopped by their enclosure. Since I am also looking into enrichment of our crocs, I thought it was a great opportunity to take advantage of this boldness combined with curiosity. I started making them jump out of water as part of their behavioral enrichment. It is an amazing sight to see these small crocs jump! Sometimes they miss their ‘reward’ (piece of meat) and the reward ends up underwater. Then they start their treasure hunt. It is so cool to see their capabilities to ‘scavenge’ underwater. When I saw them find a piece of meat underwater for the first time, I was thrilled. Amazing! I was even more amazed to see them swallow the meat underwater! I always thought that crocs always come to the surface to swallow otherwise they end up swallowing a lot of water unnecessarily. But these guys were doing it all the time! WOW. I still don’t get the logic. May be it’s a trait with young crocs but who knows…

Young crocs grow really fast. Now after about a year, they have again out-grown their enclosures. I could also see a difference in their growth rate as enclosure space is also one of the factors affecting growth. The Turtle Haven enclosure is a bit smaller than the nursery and thus the nursery gang is a bit bigger than the Turtle Haven gang. So now on 12 September 2009, we transferred both the ‘gangs’ into one biggish enclosure.

Interesting stuff till now, but why is the title of this article called “Crochameleon”?

Well, there is one more really interesting difference between the two gangs. Their body colors! The nursery gang is pretty light colored and the Turtle Haven gang is pretty dark colored! They looked so different (colorwise).

Morelet's crocodile from the Nursery enclosure. Note the 'light' coloration.

Morelet's crocodile from the Turtle Haven. Note the 'dark' coloration.

My logic behind this is that nursery enclosure gets a lot of sunlight throughout the day; almost 5 hours of direct sunlight; while on the other hand, the Turtle Haven enclosure gets very little sunlight; about 1 - 1.5 hours, that too sometimes dappled due to the trees above. The dark skin color probably helps them absorb more heat. Now the cool fact is that they can and they did change their skin color to a certain extent! That is one classic example of adaptability.

Now that they are all in the same enclosure, I expect the skin colors to even out soon.

Croc rule!

Gharial is an exclusive fish-eater.............. Not!

Gharial is now the most critically endangered large animal of South Asia with population reduction of >80% over 3 generations. With less than 200 breeding adults left in the wild, Gharial is one of the most endangered animals on earth.

Distribution of Gharials is now restricted to a few places in India and Nepal; the largest wild population being in National Chambal River Sanctuary and then in Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary.

Gharials have a typical long and slender snout built for catching fish efficiently. They are exclusive fish eaters (?). They are a riverine species and are often seen basking out on banks with other animals like turtles and birds showing no fear from these 'harmless' creatures.

One of the breeding females at Madras Croc Bank. She is gorgeous. Photo by Katie Maxwell.

Super interestingly, on the morning of 2nd September 2009, Nick Ballantyne, one of our international volunteers working on temperature profiling of an enclosure housing Gharials and Batagur kachuga turtles, came back after his daily morning reading and said "I saw the male catch an egret!"

"Really? Wow man.When?" I was now putting in charged set of batteries in my cam.

"Just now. He still has it in his mouth" he said. 

WHOOSH! 

I had reached the enclosure, stunned by the sight.

A fledgeling Little egret (Egretta garzetta) was wandering close to water's edge in pen#24 (a.k.a. temple turtle pond). The male Gharial was keeping an eye on its constant movements. The egret was hopping on some of the partially emerged stones out of water. This made the Gharial curious and it came closer to investigate. The 'not-so-smart' egret thought Gharial's head was a stone and attempted to land. WHAM! The Gharial got it in his jaws! This could just be his reaction to the whole jumping-on-the-head thing. I have actually seen this before; in fact with the same animal. But then he let it go in the previous occasion. But this time he had some other plans!

Our male Gharial swallowing the egret!

I was taking pictures thinking that he'll probably spit out the egret in a while. Just then, he started swallowing it! I could not believe my eyes! I wanted to take a video of this but then the damn camera betrayed. I had to turn it off and then turn it back on. He had already swallowed the bird by then. I managed to get some good stills though.

"Amazing huh? Fish eater!" replied Gerry when I told him what I saw. This was so crazy.

"This is one of the weirdest things ever! This is the first record of its kind. Very important to make a note of it" said Rom. 

It was a m a z i n g seeing all this happen from a distance of 10 feet! AWESOME!

CROCODILE TRAINING : PART TWO

“You’d know if they are enjoying the whole enrichment activity” said Ralf. I was wondering how. I was following one particular time everyday; 15:00, +/- 10 minutes. I started noting that they all would be doing some other stuff till about 14:50 and suddenly in 10 minutes, they would all ‘set up’ for the training.

After some intense training days, they all had chosen their ‘spots’ where they would come and wait for the training. There is no meat on Mondays so no training, but you could still see them getting ready at around 15:00 for the training! This means they are enjoying the activity. And they can calculate time of the day. More amazingly, they can also calculate day of the week! (This I found out later while working with some larger crocs.)

I was also following a fixed turn schedule for the group to be called out starting with Ally and then Pintoo, Thai, Komodo, Mik and lastly Abu. They remember that too and you can see the croc with the next turn getting ready to be called out! They were proving themselves smarter everyday (They still are!). This was getting more and more exciting for me everyday. I finally had a group of disciplined crocs coming out of and going in the water on my commands, and they were enjoying it. But I wanted to do more than just calling them out of the water. So what more can I possibly do?

“Make them jump out of water. The Saltie will love it.” suggested Ralf. What an awesome idea it was. I started calling them in one of the water pools and made them jump to get a piece of red-meat hanging from a bamboo stick. I tried this with all the five species. The Nile crocodile (Abu) and Mugger (Pintoo) didn’t show much interest or rather were not built for it. Ally liked it and would make a half-jump once in a while but then soon lose interest. The Saltie (Mik) and the Siamese crocs (Thai and Komodo) LOVED jumping out of the water and it seemed that they are perfectly built for it. Awesome! Amazing physical capability. We knew about the salties jumping out of water, but Siamese crocs are equally good.

Ally jumping out of water. Well, jumping half out of water!

Mik (Saltie) jumping out. She missed the meat in this jump.

Komodo (Siamese croc) jumping out. Bang on target!

I was so excited now. I had a bunch of crocs that would not only come out of and go back in the water, but jump out of water as well, all on my commands! Wow. I would regularly give updates to Rom whenever he visited Croc Bank. He was quite delighted with the whole idea of enrichment for crocs. He too was amazed with the learning capabilities (and some of the crazy physical capabilities of Siamese crocs). I will always be grateful to him for his encouragement and of course it wouldn’t have been possible without Ralf.  I am also thankful to Janaki who always advised to keep notes of this whole activity.

Now again, I wanted to do more than just calling them out, sending them back in and making them jump out of water. What next?

“Try interacting more with Ally. You can do a lot more with Alligators.” Ralf again suggested. Sure thing. I started interacting more with Ally. I also managed to desensitize her by patting her on the head saying “good girl” after every time she performed something right. I gradually desensitized her whole body. Now I do not have to worry about her reacting defensively (or aggressively) when I have to touch her body to check for any physical injury or anything else.

I thought why not do something like you do with dogs. It’ll be fun and will look rather cute with her. So, we started working on “sit”. It took about a week but then she figured out. She had to lay flat on her belly.

Me teaching Ally to "sit"

Pintoo was seeking attention now but since I was working on some new set of commands with Ally, I didn’t want to divide my concentration on anything else. There were also a few ‘surplus’ crocs who would come out randomly for food. Pintoo was the boldest croc in there and the smartest too, so he wanted to prove that he can do more stuff and he knew that he’d get food as reward. So he would come out and try to show his readiness for performance. I didn’t want to neglect him completely so I thought of “stay” as his next command. He took only a couple of days to figure that out. All of my commands have a tap-on-the-snout with a small bamboo stick. For “stay” he had to freeze in whichever place he was tapped “stay”. While I was working on that, I saw Ally mimicking “stay” like Pintoo! She would just come up as if asking to tap on her snout. I tapped on her snout and said “stay” and she just froze! I could not believe my eyes.

Ally performing "stay"

Later I taught them to perform “stay” with their mouth open as it looks much more impressive that way.

Getting back to Ally, she would now come and “sit” but it looked incomplete. She should now stand. I chose “up” as the command word just to keep it simple for her. We started working on that. Again it took about a week. Now with the command “up”, she has to stand up raising her head high.

Ally performing "up"

I would follow this up with a pat on her head. “Good girl Ally”. People who have seen this often say “Oh she seems to really enjoy that pat on her head”. I am sure she does. She is awesome.

"Good girl Ally"

She loves to eat and so I have to act as her dietician keeping a check on her food intake. I want fit crocs, not fat crocs, and this goes for all crocs. Their food intake is strictly monitored. One more problem I faced during the initial days when they didn’t have a fixed turn schedule was that the crocs would randomly come out and ask for food while I was working with some other croc. This was often irritating as they would ruin my concentration and distract the croc I was working with. This would become dangerous when they grow bigger and should not be encouraged. I often had to have one more person in the enclosure who would keep an eye and send back any such ‘off training’ crocs while I was working with one. First Nikhil, then Gowri and later Seth (one of our keepers) played this vital role. After about a month of this, they all knew their turns and were quite ‘disciplined’. I started working alone again.

END OF PART TWO.

To be continued...

CROCODILE TRAINING : PART ONE

Enrichment of captive animals is essential to keep them happy and healthy. Broadly, enrichment can be behavioural and environmental. For reptiles, environmental enrichment is most common, although I haven't seen a lot in Indian zoos unfortunately. This enrichment typically includes providing a close to nature habitat (environment) and other physical components that will encourage and allow natural behaviour; for eg. perches, logs, rocks, misting, waterfall, different smells, leaf litter, etc. This article will revolve around behavioural enrichment of crocodiles. "Training" as a part of behavioural enrichment had been the most successful tool. It allows the animals to 'do something' and hence gives some relief from the otherwise extremely boring life in captivity. I will talk more about this as we proceed.
___________________________________________________________

“We should start training our crocodiles” mentioned Ralf Sommerlad (Croc expert from Germany and ex-director - MCBT) one day. I was not sure how to react. Train crocodiles? Really? What does he possibly mean by that?

I was amazed by just the thought (if it is possible at all). I knew training was possible to a certain extent with lizards; monitors especially. I had tried my hands on monitors earlier but never really got into it. I also recalled a video on youtube of a guy who had managed to train a Box turtle! Of course it took him a long time; 9 years! But still he did train a turtle. But how would crocs do? I was not sure about the whole training thing. I started thinking maybe it’s just behavioral conditioning and not “training” as you do with dogs. I had loads of logical questions to which Ralf would patiently answer.

“Would you like to try training a few crocs and see it for yourself?” Ralf asked one day.

“Oh yes! I’d love to do that” I was very happy with that offer. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information available on how to train crocs. “This is still an upcoming trend in zoos keeping reptiles” Ralf would say. Sure it was. I had heard about it for the first time. Ralf guided a lot in the initial days.

“Once you get the hold of it, you will have to take it forward your way” He would say.

We started looking for ideal candidates for training. Nikhil (Curator - MCBT) suggested trying out the sub-adults (of five species) that were recently transferred to a large enclosure from nursery. Good Idea.

Target group - sub-adults of five species

I started working with Ally, the female sub-adult American Alligator, as she was already reacting to her name. She was handled regularly when she was smaller. People would call out her name all the time so she kind of knew her name. But now she was not handled for a long time. The first thing to do was to win her trust.

Crocodiles in general are quite shy animals. It is only with some behavioral conditioning (associate a particular activity, on completion of which animal gets a reward – usually food) that they become a bit bold. Young animals are even more wary. They probably see humans as predators and here in a captive scenario, a source of food, nothing more. Winning trust of such animals is surely a bit tricky.

Me trying to win Ally's trust

“Ally come” I would shout showing her a fish to lure her. Command words are very critical. The main idea is to associate certain activities to a cue, sometimes a combination of cues. Once they perform the activity, they get a reward – in this case red meat. This is taking behavioral conditioning to the next level where you can get a croc to do almost anything that it is physically capable of doing. I choose my words carefully. Cues can be vocal, visual and touch. I never knew these things till I actually saw them reacting to everything. “You should never mix up the cues or you’ll confuse them ” Ralf advised.

Anyway, getting back to Ally’s training, “You will first have to reinforce her association with her name. She should react every time you call her” said Ralf. And how do you do that? “Call her name and reward her with a piece of meat”. So here I go calling her “Ally” and throwing a piece of meat, which she gulped down really fast.  After a couple of days, she came to the water’s edge when called. That was amazing. She was reacting to her name so well! I was excited.

Regularity is one more important factor. When starting such a training program, the key is to do it very regularly, almost every day. On day four, Ally came out of the water. Wow. She now trusts me and is pretty confident that I won’t hurt her. While she was coming out, I shouted “Ally come, Ally come”. I gave her a reward. “Good girl Ally”.

“Now tap gently on her snout and send her back to water” Ralf said. “Ally water, Ally water” I said while sending her back in the water. “Now give her a reward again”. This was too amusing for me. I loved doing it. I did this everyday at 15:30. I continued this for a week. Everything was going very smooth. Every day I would notice a mugger come to the edge of the water and watch everything carefully. On day 8, I called out “Ally come” and Ally came out. Well, quite unexpectedly, the mugger also came out and sat right next to Ally as if imitating her exactly. I was speechless! “He could be your next student. Name him something” shouted Ralf. I called him Pintoo! After sending Ally back in water, I turned to Pintoo and said “Pintoo water” and he went back straight in water. That was AMAZING. They learn by watching others! I had never imagined crocs could be so smart. “Great job Soham. You just got your second student. ” Awesome! Now I had two crocs coming out of water and going back on my ‘commands’.

I now started to look for more interested individuals. Soon enough I had “Mik” – a Saltwater Crocodile, “Thai” & “Komodo” – Siamese Crocodiles, “Abu” – Nile Crocodile, and of course “Ally” and “Pintoo” coming out and going back in the water. All of these animals were now perfectly conditioned.

Training group with Ally in the water

END OF PART ONE.


To be continued...

Vulture visits the hospital!

This happened in Februay 2006. We were entering the bird section of our rehab center for some follow-up treatment of birds that had some major wing injuries. We were quite amazed to see a juvenile Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) sitting right on top of the treatment room. I had no clue why would a random Vulture come and sit on such a low height for no apparent reason. Mr. Sarfraz Malik (A true Falconer and Raptor Guru) was then working with us. We felt it was a pretty strange thing for a wild Vulture to come and sit like that. We expected that it would fly away in a while but that didn't happen. It kept on sitting there for more than an hour! May be the bird has some problems. It was also strange that it was tolerating human presence quite a bit. We decided to catch it for further examination.

Sarfrazbhai came up with a plan to noose the bird. This method has worked earlier in a similar situation but is only tried with raptors (with heavy strong necks). Special soft cotton thread was chosen for the purpose to minimize possible injuries. The above photo shows Sarfrazbhai preparing the noose.

We attempted the noose but in vain. Interestingly, inspite of the attempts, the bird didn't bother to escape away. It did step back but no efforts of flying away. 

I thought of trying out my plan. So I got a ladder to take a closer look at the bird.

I wasn't able to see the bird properly as it had stepped back and the ladder was too small. So, I thought may be luring  it with some meat might work. So I got a chunk of juicy red meat and attempted to lure it. It was surely interested in that. It took a step forward.

One step was not enough. I had to get a bit closer. So I distracted it with that piece of meat while I was struggling to get some more height. Sarfrazbhai and an animal keeper were helping me maintain my balance.

The Vulture was now within my (striking) range and that was probably my only chance. One (really) fast sweep and caught the Vulture!

After the safe capture I passed on the bird to Sarfrazbhai and then got down from the ladder myself. I was feeling quite proud of catching a wild Vulture with my 'bare hands'. 

Handling Vultures of the Gyps family may leave some great looking scars on your body. Their beak is build to tear open tough skin and human skin is not so tough as you find out during the bites.

It was most difficult when they have to be captured everyday for their post surgery follow-up treatment. Initially they are housed in a 'restricted activity' cage which is really small to prevent any unwanted injuries in attempts to fly. Taking them out from such small cages is some work, especially when there are over 25 such Vultures for the daily treatment.

Getting back to our story. When we did a general physical examination on the captured bird, we found it had kite-string injuries on the right wing.

Wait a minute, I know this bird!

This Vulture was hand-raised at our rehab center and was released last year!!!! I used to tag all my released birds and this guy had the tag!

How and why did it come exactly to the rehab center after incurring an injury is still a mystery.

Amazing huh?