American Alligator enrichment training

"Ally" loves her training sessions!



Ally, a 6 year old gator enjoys the enrichment program as much as I do!
This clip shows a small 'sequence' of commands that she loves to do.

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...

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.
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“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...