CROCODILE TRAINING : THE FINAL CHAPTER

It took a really long time to write this chapter. I guess it’s not easy to summarize a two and a half year long episode! Plus I’ve now moved to Bangalore, and The Gerry Martin Project keeps me busy. BTW, some fantastic experiences and projects coming up later this year! :)

I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed the croc time!  

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I keep on mentioning how I had no clue about training crocodiles before I was introduced to this concept. And now, I don’t miss an opportunity to promote croc training as one of the most efficient tools to manage these magnificent animals in captivity, and provide the best behavioral enrichment at the same time. These are in fact the two most important aspects that are taken in to consideration; management and enrichment. Of course education is another very important component that is often clubbed with croc training, something similar to the croc enrichment shows at the Madras Crocodile Bank.

Demonstrating 'desensitization' during an enrichment show.
Photo by Akanksha Mukherjee.

I am so glad that I was introduced to croc training from the enrichment point of view first (not to forget to thank Ralf Sommerlad again for that!). This gave me a super advantage. Something I didn’t realize in the beginning. In simple words, my job then was to ‘entertain’ the crocs. And it did take some time to figure “how the hell do I entertain them?”

I remember what Ralf told me in the early days.

“If they are coming out of their safe hide (usually water) for a tiny piece of meat that is not worth the energy spent or the risk taken (as per croc logic), that my friend, is a good enrichment.”

I was so totally stunned when I noticed that happen for the first time. I keep giving example of this big male Mugger ‘Rambo’, who would come all the way from the other end of the opposite bank to ‘open his mouth’ and ‘jump’; all for three, tiny, one inch sized meat chunks!

'Rambo' - one of the largest male Muggers  performing an "open your mouth" command.
Photo by Ralf Sommerlad.

The idea of developing and running enrichment programs is to keep them mentally and physically engaged. At no point of time should they be getting bored of it. If you see any such signs, you’ve gotta improvise. And yes, that was the advantage! I had to make sure that the crocs don’t get bored of the same thing over and over again. This was actually not so difficult; cuz I get bored very easily! All I’d do is keep myself entertained. The moment I felt the routine was getting rather monotonous, I’d say to myself “If I’m not enjoying this, they obviously aren’t”.  I always kept my interest as a parameter to determine when to start something new. This allowed me to expand the domain without restrictions. You know how it works. When you get bored, you do all kinds of crazy stuff with less logic and more curiosity; like a kid would blow saliva bubbles to see how big can they get before bursting!

I started diversifying commands in an attempt to enhance their problem solving capability. End result: ‘Ally’ now follows 16 commands!

"Ally" - the star

It all started with Ally (American alligator) and gradually I tried my hands on 40 individuals in all. I emphasize on the word ‘individual’. I have worked with 40 crocs of 10 species of all ages (American alligator, Mugger, Siamese croc, Nile croc, Saltwater croc, African slender-snouted croc, Dwarf croc O. tetraspis, Morelet’s croc, Spectacled caiman and Yacare caiman) and not two are same. They all have distinct personalities; they are all true individuals.

From left to right: "Johny" - Spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus), "Jaws 3" - Saltwater croc (Crocodylus porosus), and "Pintoo" - Mugger (Crocodylus palustris).

Photo by (left to right) Akanksha Mukherjee, Nariman Vazifdar, Shikha Choudhary

This offered me a huge learning platform. There are heaps of things I've learnt through croc training, and I don’t think it would have been possible otherwise. It was all the more interesting for me since I’d never read anything on croc training or how they behave and interact whilst learning. It was like discovering something for the first time! It surely was, at least for me. Truly learnt a lot, especially on the behavior front. My first training group was just perfect for this. Ten crocs of five species (American alligator, Mugger, Siamese croc, Nile croc, and Saltie). Building of the social hierarchy, inter-species interaction, communication, and competition were the highlights. They all have their specific rank, which of course changes with time (growth, hormones and brains!). Interestingly, size does not always matter! Ally was the largest and eldest and hence was dominant. The next rank was open for a long time. I always thought the next ‘big guy’ would earn the second place. Turns out NO! The super smart ‘Pintoo’ (Mugger) always bullied the larger ‘Abu’ (Nile croc), and continues to do the same till date. In fact there is a good chance he’d be the dominant croc soon.

First time readers, please read the earlier ‘croc training’ articles for the above to make sense!

Adaptability is what allows survival. That’s exactly what these crocs are doing; trying to survive in the changing environment. This makes it possible to exploit their willingness to learn new things to adapt better. Crate training, station training, and desensitizing are often used for effective management.

Selective feeding of a Saltwater croc in a moderate density enclosure.
Watch on YouTube

It is natural to compete for food, shelter and mate (We all do it! :)). All animals retain this particular instinct wherever they are; wild or captivity, unless of course they are ‘over-civilized’ like a few of us! Crocs are super competitive, fortunately. I say this because that quality helped me a lot when training 6 crocs in the same enclosure.

I mentioned in the last chapter about the launch of croc enrichment program in the Croc Bank. That evening I was chatting with Janaki after the super performance by the entire croc group. She was curious about how I trained all of them. Logically, it would take a long time and immense patience to do that. Patience yes, but surprisingly, very little time!

I was explaining to her “There is a very healthy competition in this group. They all know that at the end of a routine, they get a reward, and the more they do the more they get. Very often learning new tricks gives more treats since they do the old trick plus the new trick. They are rewarded for every initiative as part of positive reinforcement. So all I have to do is teach Ally a new trick, all the others learn just by watching her and are ready to do the same when they are called!”

That was when Janaki mentioned about ‘Rival training’ or ‘Model training’ method. She had recently read that somewhere, and that was the technique used to train the famous African grey parrot – ‘Alex’!

“Hey, the method is so similar! Wait a minute….. It is exactly the same!”

I never knew the technique I was using had a name! All I did was followed Ralf’s pointers. Basically, you train a ‘model’ to do things using positive reinforcement, and most importantly, let others see that. And because of the rivalry within the group, the others will want to compete by doing the same thing to get attention and treats. Ally, in this case was the model.

So what exactly is the driving force? ‘Survival’ sure, but what else? Not sure if you guessed it, but the word I'm hinting to is  ‘j e a l o u s y’! Yes, I’ve been called names for thinking this but that doesn’t discourage me. Crocs apparently aren’t supposed to have those emotions. Well, they weren’t supposed to learn 16 commands either!

Envying a rival is jealousy, right? But how do we know if it is what I think it is?! Let’s look at an example. After a break of about five weeks, I went in for a training session. All of them came out eagerly in the performance area. Ally seemed extremely happy. I did the regular routine with her and then asked her to go back to “water”. The others were called out after that except Thai (the female Siamese croc). Komodo (the male Siamese croc) did not perform as well as he could, so I called him out for a second time. All this time Ally was being a bad girl and kept trying to come out of water. I had to push her back a couple of times. I guess she wanted to spend some more time that day. So what’s so cool about that? Here it comes… After I finished Komodo’s routine for the second time and got out, I hear fast steps on sand. I turn around and see Ally putting up a super aggressive chase. Guess who the victim is? Yep, it is Komodo. It was strange but not strange enough. I assumed the tension will just melt down, but it was strange.

“Let’s wait for a bit and see what happens”

Scott Johnson and Elizabeth Farmer from Texas were volunteering at the time, and were armed with cameras at the moment. They did get some decent shots of the whole incident; I just wish I hadn’t misplaced that damn cd! I hope to find it soon, and will then put up the photos.

Excited Ally.
Photo by Umeed Mistry.

Back to the story: Surprisingly, the chase continued on land and then in water. Komodo rushed out of this pool and entered the other. So now there was no visual contact, and so logically, the tension should be over. But no! Ally enters the other pool looking for Komodo! The chase continues in the other pool for like a minute, before they both disappear underwater. All the other crocs in that pool looked surprised. Ally now surfaces in the northern side and Komodo somewhere south. Ally looks at others, chases everyone out except Thai! Komodo gets chased for third time now and is out and hiding in the farthest corner. Ally comes close to where I was standing in amazement, and looks straight in my eyes.. 


...it was all silent after that.

Now why would she chase all except Thai, the only one whom I didn’t call out that day? And Komodo in particular gets a double dose. I cannot come up with any other explanations but the theory of jealousy. Can you?

Ally has another very special quality, eagerness to learn more, all the time. I can always see this “me, me, me!” expression on her face. It becomes so much easy to teach her new things. Another interesting story: Andy Wakefield and Jeremy Cusack were shooting a small promotional video for Croc Bank. We were taking some shots of training, and I was explaining how awesome Ally was. Just then I thought “Just for fun, let’s try and teach her a new command in front of the camera!” The video below shows how she learnt a brand new trick in under 6 minutes!!! That is bloody awesome for a croc. I was so proud of her that day..

Ally learns a new trick in under 6 minutes! All captured in this footage.

Watch on YouTube

There are so many memories with these crocs, never thought I’d get emotionally attached to them. Bonding with crocs is one of the best experiences ever... especially with one croc in particular..

Exchanging thoughts (22 October, 2010).
Photo by myself with self timer on tripod!

I will miss you Ally!


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CROCODILE TRAINING : PART FOUR

The whole training and enrichment of crocodiles started off as an experiment. The current ‘model’ was going really well now, but there’s always that urge to try more things. In this case, try more crocs. All of the crocs in the training group were juveniles; around 6 years old. I remember bugging Ralf a lot when he was here.

“Do you think it is easier to train a certain age class?”


“No. It is all the same whether you train young crocs or big adults.” said Ralf.


“Really? Even the BIG ones?”


“Ya. They are often easier!”


Cool!

So that was my next plan. Train some big crocs. Of course enrichment is always attached with such programs. Now I needed a big croc, but which one? One day I was walking past pen 10. A background on this enclosure – This enclosure houses breeding Mugger females and one super lucky breeding male. He was having a tough time trying to keep all the females happy! Anyway, I just randomly called him “Rambo” and he looked at me! WHOA!!! I don’t know why he responded but that was the ultimate opportunity. You always identify ‘responsive’ crocs like this for training. It is not impossible to train any less responsive crocs but it is just much more fun with good response. I started calling him out and giving some rewards. Every time he responds to “Rambo”, he’s given a reward and this I carried on for about a week to reinforce his name. Once he knew his name he was like a dog when I call him.

Rambo coming out. Note the high walk.

Of course there’ll be days when he’s not in the mood and ignores me completely. But in the good days he is awesome. I first make him “jump” which he absolutely loves. Folks who have seen this up close know what I am talking about.

Rambo leaping for the meat. This pic would have been awesome if it was taken a second later.

Rambo is one of the fittest crocs at Croc Bank. He often manages to clear ground when he jumps and that is damn impressive for a 10-footer!

I wanted to do something really different with Rambo. Something that wouldn’t look like a simple trick that you can teach a croc. The next trick was ‘inspired’ from one of the youtube videos! There’s this guy who was working with a big Saltie, desensitizing him. Next thing he did was asked the croc to open its mouth and the croc did! I was speechless. How the hell do you teach a croc to open its mouth?!? How do you get the message through? I was breaking my head on HOW? I took that as a challenge, spent some time with Rambo and cracked the code!

Rambo with his mouth open.

Again, folks who have seen this up close will agree with the following part. It looks totally unbelievable. After the jumping, I ask Rambo to look “up” which he does perfectly well. After that the next command is “open your mouth”; Rambo opens his mouth! He gets a reward. “Up” and “open your mouth”, and he will do it again and again. It looks awesome. But How?

I was so overjoyed when I first taught him that. People just couldn’t believe that. When they saw it for the first time, they thought it was merely a coincidence that he opened his mouth.

"This is not real, right?" They would say.

"You don't believe what you see?"

“Rambo up” and “open your mouth” and I instantly had some astounded people!

Basically, all of the ‘tricks’ or ‘commands’ are based on the target croc’s basic behavior. I never entered the enclosure and always worked from outside but still managed to teach him to open his mouth on my command. Well, actually that was one of the easiest things to do! Rambo is a big guy. If he does “up”, which is looking up at me, for a longer time, he gets tired and drops his lower jaw; opening the mouth. When I noticed this first I went “Whoa! He just opened his mouth! Similar to that Saltie. Now I only have to make him understand that he has to do it when I ask him to.” When a croc is already doing the behavior that I want him to do, my job is half done. I only need to reinforce the behavior and associate a vocal command and reward with that. Every time during “up” when he opened his mouth after a bit, I would go “open your mouth” and give him a reward. Within three days he  figured that when he hears that vocal command he is supposed to open his mouth for which he will get a reward. I continued doing this everyday for a week and had a really cool trick on board!

I enjoy working with big crocs equally well. Next target group was from pen 8. Gerry and a group of herpers from U.K. helped build a wooden ramp for enrichment of the crocs. The basic idea is to get them up on the ramp and give them food there. This will give them ample exercise as they will have to come a long way considering the enclosure size.

Initial days need some extra encouragement

I managed to fit in “stay” when they reached the top of ramp.

Tommy performing "stay"

This whole activity is a big crowd puller and offers excellent education opportunity. We will be having some good talk accompanying it. Tommy and Gerry are the crocs that I am working with in this enclosure. They are big and impressive but I am waiting to try my hands on Monster, the largest male Mugger. That will be truly awesome.

END OF PART FOUR.

To be continued...

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...