I'm just back from the Cleveland Clicker Expo, and my head feels
stuffed to the rafters. You'd think after six or seven Expos, some
of the lectures would start to sound stale, but not so. It doesn't
matter how many times I hear the lectures on clicker basics, there is
always a new twist, a new angle that emerges.

The "ah has" from the Expo are too many to list, but I will share
some highlights. On Monday after the Expo we had a Faculty meeting
to discuss plans for next year. The meeting is something we all look
forward to because Ken Ramirez generally brings video clips of his
current training projects. Ken is the Director of Training at the
Shedd Aquarium in Chicago so he's always got something fun he's
working on. This year's video highlights included some work he's
been doing with beluga whales at an Aquarium in Japan.

Belugas apparently blow air rings the way some smokers blow smoke
rings. The behavior is not well understood and there is no clear
predictor of when it will occur. You could watch for days and never
see the bubble rings, but by chance a Japanese film crew happened to
be on hand at one point when the whales were blowing bubbles. They
got some beautiful photos of the rings. The zoo started using the
images in their advertising, but then of course the public wanted to
see the whales blowing rings. So the zoo needed to get the behavior
on cue.

The whales were in tanks with glass side walls so people could watch
them swimming under water. The trainers wanted to be able to cue the
whales to blow air rings at the audience. The problem was they
didn't know how to get the behavior in the first place. They
couldn't rely on capturing the behavior since it occurred so
irregularly. So getting bubble rings on cue was the training
problem the zoo asked Ken to help them solve.

Ken's solution illustrated everything I love about clicker training -
the weaving together of a solid understanding of the science of
clicker training with good training technique and creativity. He
started with a behavior the whales had solidly on cue - spitting
water. They would come up to the edge of the tank and on cue spit
water at the trainers.

So Ken started by asking the whales to spit water while they were
under water. The whales readily transferred the behavior. The
movement of their lips for spitting was similar to that of the air
blowing behavior, but spitting water under water didn't create the
same charming visual effect. It was however a good beginning. The
next challenge was getting them to spit air.

When the whales blew air rings on their own, they would first swim up
to the surface and get a mouthful of air. So the next task was to
get the whales to hold air in their mouths. This was the truly
ingenious part. Ken used his own respirator. He cued the whales to
open their mouths and then inserted his respirator so they got a big
gulp of air. The whales seemed perfectly comfortable with this and
held the air obligingly in their mouths.

So the next step was to give the "spit water" cue and see what
happened. Ken gave the cue, and the whales responded by blowing an
air ring. It wasn't a very good air ring, but the whale was
definitely spitting out his air bubble.

To get a better formed ring, the trainers had to get better in their
timing. The trainers Ken was working with tended to click too late.
They were clicking when they could see the finished air ring, but
that's not the information that was most important to the whales.
They really needed to be bridged just as they were forming the bubble
ring. So, Ken started looking at shaping micro movements. He said
he got the idea for the solution in part from presentations he'd seen
at the Expo. Kay Lawrence's discussions about shaping micro-
movements in dogs got him thinking about doing something similar with
the whales.

To learn what the trainers needed to click, Ken had them study video
of the whales blowing bubble rings. He slowed the video way down so
they could see frame by frame what the whales were doing. Ken had
all the trainers watch the video over and over again until they could
recognize the changes and begin to see and respond to them in real
time. When he first showed us video of the whales blowing bubble
rings, it was hard to see what they were doing, but slowed down it
became very clear. You could see the whale form a round circle with
its lips, then pull them in and at the same time the shape of its
mellon (it's forehead) distorted. It creased in and a micro second
later, the whale produced the bubble ring. It floated through the
water, a beautifully formed ring of bubbles, as if the whale were
blowing kisses at the camera.

At this point Ken could reliably cue the whales to blow bubble rings,
but he was still supplying the air. The next step was to have the
whales get their own air. As a preparation for that he had the
aquarium's trainers include bubble blowing in the whales daily
training sessions. When he returned a couple of weeks later, the
whales had become practiced bubble ring blowers. So Ken did a
session with them where he gave the cue to blow a ring, but did not
first give the whales any air. The first whale spit water, but Ken
did not bridge and reinforce him. Instead he cued him again. The
whale hesitated, then went up to the surface, got his own mouthful of
air, came down and very deliberately blew it straight at Ken. Success.

Ken showed some enchanting video of the whales engaging with the
spectators. They blew their bubble rings straight at the people so
they floated towards them before bursting against the glass. The
rings looked like fairy rings floating in the water. The whales
began adding their own flourishes to the behavior, including blowing
bubble rings out their air holes! They would also blow a ring and
then do a back flip so they could "catch" the ring with their tail.
It was pure delight watching them.

Els Kleverlaan schreef op woensdag 28 maart 2007, 16:02:


Ik wil je niet verontrusten maar dit is qua fructaan een gevaarlijke periode.
Het temperatuurverschil tussen dag en nacht is veels te groot.
Vannacht b.v. 5 graden, nu hier 20!!!
Ik wilde Catcher vanmiddag vroeg al in een weiland zetten waar alweer behoorlijk gras staat. Nadat ie 2 dagen een klein landje heeft afgevreten waar weinig tot niets stond.
Ik zag de fructaan en dacht: lekker wachten. Ik heb hem zojuist pas weer erin gezet, toen het fructaan al dalend aangaf.
Chaser komt helemaal niet op gras.
Ik zou de fructaan-index zeker in de gaten houden, dit kan heel goed een voorbode zijn. Voordat je het weet is het gebeurd hoor!
Ik zou echt geen risico nemen Els, niet op gras!!

Wil.

Ik had het wel al eens gelezen geloof ik, maar daar staat ook niet echt een bevestiging of niet op dat artikel van die belgen. Dus het zou best kunnen kloppen...? Ik zal anders dit weekend eens precies kijken wat ze hadden geschreven en het eens vertellen :).