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...

Eat, eat, eat. Relax.

Life is not so easy for carnivorous animals. They always have to be a step ahead of their prey, which is often very difficult. Success in hunting is not an everyday matter in spite of trials. If one meal lasts for two days there is no guarantee of a meal on third day. It could be a week or more before the next catch!

Adaptation is must for survival. It is simply a process whereby an organism becomes better suited to live in its habitat. Most of the predatory animals have developed one adaptive trait in common; being an 'opportunistic feeder'. This trait is extremely effective and can be commonly seen in almost all predators. I had seen several examples on T.V., crocs, komodos, hyenas, etc. stuffing themselves as much as they can. I always knew this for a fact but never put in any serious thoughts until a couple of weeks back; when I saw one of the best examples of opportunistic feeding in a much unexpected animal.

With the first rain showers, several thousands of winged male termites stormed Croc Bank. They were everywhere including my room. Our canteen lights were the greatest attractions. All the geckos were having an awesome time.

                           

Hemidactylus leschenaultii (left) and Hemidactylus frenatus (right) gorging.

In minutes, many started losing their wings and then was the time for frogs and toads. I was having a great time too enjoying the feeding frenzy. It was crazy. All of the insectivorous population was out busy eating. Eating? No, I mean stuffing themselves. My bathroom-resident female Polypedates maculatus was no exception. I actually got to hand-feed her for the first time that day! That was so cool.

Duttaphrynus melanostictus was almost as round as a ball!

“Hey”  I thought “This would be  a great time to stuff up my scorpions too”.

Akanksha caught some termites and offered my adult female Heterometrus xanthopus.

I could not have imagined what I saw!

Heterometrus xanthopus playing a pig with at least five termites in her mouth!

This species does not use venom for small prey items so she was just catching the termites one by one and stuffing her mouth like mad. It looked so funny like a kid stuffing chocolates in his mouth. The big female Heterometrus laoticus did the same. I had never thought that scorpions would do this but later I realized the importance of such behavior. So much of easy food does not come your way every day, so go ahead and stuff yourself with as much as possible and no tension of feeding for over a week! That would be such a great relief in the wild; like for the geckos, toads and frogs.

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...