This is bird 28. Like bird 37, she has been involved in the Second-Order study for as long as I have worked in the lab. So her statistics will be just as sparse.
Bird 28
Gender: Unknown
Birth date: Unknown (from older group)
Preferred Partner: Unknown
Bird 28 is a very nervous bird. Many of the birds will shake when they are separated from the others, for instance, when they are sitting on the table in front of a student with a clicker, but she shakes longer and harder than all the rest.
The birds are placed head and feet first into a pitcher in order to weigh them. Most of the birds will walk out backwards if you place the pitcher on its side on a surface. Bird 28 has never learned to do that.
She will turn herself around so that her head and tail both emerge at the same time. If you look closely at the picture to the right, you can see her head poking out and just below her head is the tip of her tail. She sort of pops out and then starts fluttering around. The fastest way to calm her is simply to put the door on the chamber.Bird 28 is the first bird I handled during my orientation to the lab. Her wings had been trimmed so that she could not fly. Then Dr. Potter let her loose and had me catch her. It seemed very easy, but after seeing many other students chase other birds for up to 20 minutes, I think I just accidentally chanced upon the easiest way to catch them. She walked over to a corner and I put my arms out wide and then quickly grabbed her before she could escape. Dr. Hesse can catch them flying through the air! I am only a grasshopper.
One story that I felt very bad about at the time was the second time I had to catch her. She is not very big, so it is not as hard for me to keep my hands around her wings while I carry her, but it took me a few days to figure out where on her body to hold her. On this day, I held her too close to her tail. She lifted her wings and got them loose, but I still had ahold of the lower part of her body. I should have just let her go, but I tried to hold on to her. I didn't think I was holding tight, because I didn't want to hurt her, but at one point she had wiggled to the point where I no longer was holding her body - only her tail feathers. Then they all fell out in my hand and she was loose. I put those feathers down, and then it was easy to catch her by cornering her. I felt bad about her tail for weeks afterward. She was not hurt, but she looked funny with a bare rear end until new feathers grew in.
I tell my embarrassing story so that you will not hang on to your bird. It is easier to re-catch than to re-gain a hold when their wings are loose. I have learned one trick though. If you can put their back against your chest, they can't flap and you can guide their wings back down and get a better grip. (Beware you will get their white mark on your clothes - but then you shouldn't wear your nice clothes in the lab anyway.) Of course with some birds, you will never need these tricks because they will gladly hop into the pitcher with a few pellets in it. Bird 28 will not. I have never known her to voluntarily hop into the pitcher. But she has other good qualities. She is a good learner and a fast performer (once she stops shivering!). And of course - she is very cute!
Here is a picture of her sitting in my hand. She is one of the smaller birds, as I have mentioned, and I have learned how to hold her wings with just one hand, as I am in this picture.
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We have a Colloquium series every Spring semester during which invited psychologists come to speak about their research or job experience as a way to show students all the various exciting careers they can get into with their degrees. I highly recommend attending. You can get a unit if you want, or you can just attend for free. Ask Dr. Howard for more information.
Today, Gary Priest from the Zoological Society of San Diego came to tell us about his career in animal training. He is a "great-grandson" of B. F. Skinner and helped transform the animal handling practices at Sea World and the San Diego Zoo.
He told us a story about how elephants were handled. Elephants had been trained for centuries using dominance and negative reinforcement. A person held something like a fiberglass wand and poked the elephant until it did what the person wanted. When an elephant began to show aggression towards a person, the person had to show dominance or risk being killed by fleeing and losing his or her spot in the pecking order. Zoo keepers took the cue from those who had lived among the elephants in Africa and Asia and adopted the same techniques.
This lead to some very unfortunate accidents and an average of two elephant trainer deaths per year. The animal training profession was rated second only to coal-mining as the most hazardous job.
Something needed to change. Gary Priest was called to "fix" the situation and has transformed the way elephants and other animals are trained in zoos across the country. Well over 50% of the zoos have abandoned negative reinforcement techniques in favor of positive only reinforcement. In fact, Cindy, an elephant who was causing a lot of trouble, has been retrained using positive reinforcement only and was named "Woman of the Year" in her home town (I think Chicago?)
After hearing Gary Priest's wonderful presentation, I was immediately inspired to come and train the birds to come out of the cages voluntarily and sit on my arm. I did just as his trainers did. I stayed on the outside so that they had the option of refusing (of course, I can't fit into the cage, but the idea transferred to my hand - after the first or second taste of food, all presentations were at the door or outside. Hands in the cage usually precede getting caught.), and I used only positive reinforcement. After about 10 presentations, three of the birds came completely out of their cages and sat on my arm. They even let me move them around a little before I faced them toward their doors and they flew back in.
One of the birds I trained today was Bird 28. I thought I might have a hard time because she seems so nervous so often, but she was just as easy as the rest! It makes me think that we are too rough with the pigeons sometimes. A little more patience may teach Bird 28 to calm down in the chamber with the door still open. (Actually I attempted this at one point and it was working, but I didn't have consecutive days in a row and then I stopped running the birds and took on different responsibilities in the lab.) Now I have lots of hope, or should I say positive collateral by-products mixed with higher motivation... Gary Priest has been an establishing operation for even better pigeon handling/training techniques.
Here is a brief biography of Gary Priest from the 2004 CalABA conference.
http://www.calaba.org/2004conf/presenter_priest.htm
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