Hi you guys, I am Dr. Sophie Rubin. I'm a professor at Grand Rapids Community College. I work in the psychology department and I'm a licensed psychologist and behavioral scientist. I'm here today at the Critchlow Alligator Sanctuary to show you some of the training that they do here.
And I have with me here Peter Critchlow. How's it going? Hope you're ready.
Let's go see some gators. Yeah. All right, so I'm here today to demonstrate some learning principles with these alligators.
Learning is defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience and was developed by B.F. Skinner, and that was developed in the 1950s and the 1960s. So there's a few reasons why we want to do training with animals at zoos and aquaria. One of those reasons is for veterinary purposes. So it's a really good idea to be able to train the animals so that they come to you so that the veterinarian can inspect them for health reasons.
Another reason that you want to do training is because it's just generally good stimulation for the animals and can you think of any other reasons? Well yeah so here we have to have our animals inside for the winter time because these are not animals that can live outside in the winter here in Michigan so we train them. so that we can move them inside without actually having to put our hands on. We teach them to go inside of our indoor habitats. Right, so it's a lot easier than just wrangling a gator.
It's a lot easier to just train them to go inside when you call them. Another reason why you want to do training is because if you think about places like Shedd Aquarium, you know they do dolphin shows and sea lion shows. Here they do alligator shows and that really is a way to educate the general public.
and increase awareness and promote conservation as well. All right you guys, so what I'm hoping to demonstrate right now is something called a discriminative stimulus. So we also refer to that, the shorthand is we call it an SD. So discriminative stimulus or an SD.
And what that is, is it's like a signal or a cue That indicates that reinforcement is forthcoming if they engage in the right behavior. So the behavior that we want these alligators to come, to engage in, is to basically come when they're called by their name or when they hear this bucket. So we're going to kind of pound this bucket and shake it up a little bit and they're going to hear it and they're going to come. So the shaking or pounding of this bucket on this fence here is called the discriminative stimulus.
So let's see. if it works and how it works in action. Gators, come on over guys. Gators, let's go.
So that kind of pounding and calling the gators is a discriminative stimulus. It tells them that. if they come when they hear that noise or they hear them being called that they're going to get some food so they're on their way they're alligators they they might not be the fastest but they'll make it so while you're rolling i'm going to get in there and see if i can get this guy to come out all right so this is actually a good time to talk about what we call motivating operations so so There's two states that we're concerned with, and those are states of deprivation and satiation. So deprivation, you're deprived of something, such as food, for example, in this case. Or satiation, you're full of something, food in this case.
So sometimes when the alligators are full, that is, they're not hungry, they're not really motivated to work for food. So sometimes when you try to call them over and get them to do something, if they're not hungry, they're simply not going to do it. you have to wait until they're a little bit food deprived or hungry for them to work again.
So in other words, they have to have sufficient motivation to do it. Think about like if you were training a dog or a dolphin to do something. The same thing applies as well.
They're not going to work. You're not going to be able to teach your dog how to sit or shake if they're not hungry and motivated for treats. All right, so we're going to be talking a lot about reinforcement today, specifically positive reinforcement.
So a reinforcer is a consequence that's applied after a behavior, and it ends up increasing the future frequency of that behavior. So there's two types of reinforcers that we're going to be talking about. Mostly we're going to be displaying something called primary reinforcement today. So primary reinforcers are those things that satisfy biological needs. So food, water, sex, sleep, those kind of things.
So food that we're going to be using today here at this alligator sanctuary is a primary reinforcer. There's also things that are called secondary or conditioned reinforcers. Those are things that you learn to be reinforced by. So things like money, music, entertainment, so on and so forth. But mainly here today at the sanctuary we're going to be demonstrating the use of primary reinforcement.
It's also referred to as a positive reinforcer because positive refers to the fact that this is something that is added to the environment. So it's not there, the animal engages in a behavior, we add this consequence to the environment, the animal likes it and it ends up increasing their behavior in the future. So now they're going to do what we want them to do more often because of that positive reinforcement that was added.
We also can talk about the distinction between continuous and intermittent reinforcers. So continuous reinforcement means that the animal is going to get a reward every single time that they engage in that behavior. Intermittent reinforcement means that they're only going to receive a reinforcer every once in a while.
Here at the sanctuary, we're going to use continuous reinforcement for the most part. They're going to get a reward every single time they do what. we ask them to do.
Okay, so we are hoping to demonstrate for you right now something called environmental enrichment. It is pretty much what it sounds like. It's enriching the environment in a way that produces stimulation for the animal and prevents them from getting bored.
So one of the main ways that you can do that. is to put some type of new or novel stimulus into the enclosure and that often often involves either hiding food throughout the enclosure or sometimes just tossing something in the enclosure that is new that they don't get access to very often. So today we're gonna we're gonna try giving them a watermelon and we're gonna see what happens if it if they're interested in it and hopefully it produces some behavior on their part and enhances some stimulation. for them.
Here's my watermelon. Not a whole lot. Well yeah they're just like what is that thing?
So they're gonna be a little curious and nervous at first. They're just kind of curious right now. It's not something they've seen before.
These guys have never seen a watermelon before, but we have bigger alligators. And they, oh, he's, he's, there he goes. He's got it. Yes!
That shows you how strong their jaws are. Well, there you go. It doesn't take much with an alligator to devour that piece of food. We're going to hang out with Tyrion for a little bit here and we're going to get Tyrion to come over here.
But during this I want to demonstrate to you what clicker training is all about. So clickers are often used with dogs and dolphins and alligators at zoos and aquariums. And clickers are known as conditioned reinforcers or secondary reinforcers.
So that is, it's something that... The organism has to learn to be reinforced by. So like money, entertainment, music. So the clicker becomes a conditioned or secondary or learned reinforcer. There's two different types of conditioned reinforcement.
So when the click is followed by food, then it's referred to as a simple conditioned reinforcer. So click and then food. So you click and then provide some food. When the click is followed by food or a bunch of other things like maybe head pats or belly rubs if you're thinking about a dog or tongue rubs if you're thinking about a dolphin then it's termed a generalized condition reinforcer.
So the click is a simple condition reinforcer if it only has one backup reinforcer like food but it becomes known as a generalized condition reinforcer if it has a whole bunch of backup reinforcers. So the point of using the clicker during training is to bridge the gap or the delay between the animal engaging in the behavior that you want them to and the delivery of reinforcement. So you want the reinforcer to be as immediate as possible and sometimes it might take you a minute to kind of get that food out and then toss it to the animal and then for the for them to get it. You want that delay to be as brief as possible so you use this click to kind of bridge the gap so because you can deliver this immediately so they engage in the behavior that you like click and then food.
So Tyrion is actually our oldest alligator he's almost 30 years old and he's not very big which is a result of him being kept in a basement for about 25 years and so when we finally were able to rescue him we were pretty much shocked that he's such a small size for his age but even though he's small he is very uh highly intelligent so i'm gonna talk to him and he's been kind of listening to us this whole time but he's smart enough to know that doesn't matter what's going on around me i don't need to waste my energy unless i know for sure i'm getting a treat so alligators kind of become this calculating thing where they're like i'm not really going to do anything unless i know there's a reward so But once I actually start addressing him, he's going to know, oh, I'm going to get something out of this. Terrian, wake up, buddy. Come on. Come on, Terrian.
Come on. Good boy. Come on. Let's take a walk.
Come here, Terrian. Terrian, come on. Come on.
Come on. I got a treat for you. Come on. Come on.
Come on, Terrian. He's not going to get that ultimate reinforcer until he engages in that final behavior. Good boy. Tyrion. Come on.
Tyrion. I'm going to actually feed him this time. Okay.
Tyrion, come on. Good boy. Good boy.
When they call them by their names, that's also a discriminative stimulus that we talked about earlier. So it basically is a signal or cue. that you come when you're called and reinforcement is going to be available for coming when you when you're called you can come at any other time you can you can approach the trainer at other times you can approach the fence and other times but you're not going to get any food unless they specifically called you over so that's known as a discriminative stimulus We are inside the enclosures of Godzilla and Medusa and we're gonna show you some of the things that they can do. They can come in, they can come out, they can come out of the when they're called.
They can get in the up position and the down position when they're told to do that. So we're going to be demonstrating all these principles that we've talked about. Discriminative stimuli, reinforcement. So let's see Peter interact with Godzilla and Medusa.
So over here I have Medusa. She's our largest female, about eight feet long. We've had her about 15 years, and we've taught her pretty good to come to her name.
So I'm going to have Medusa kind of swim around with me. Medusa, come on over here.. Come on Medusa. There you go. Medusa.
Come on up. Come on up. Lay down. Good girl.
Good girl. Nope. Back up a little bit.
Back up. It's right behind you. There you go.
Back up. Good girl. Godzilla's our biggest alligator!
Pretty excited. So I got a whole handful of treats. Down. Down.
Godzilla. Down. Good boy.
Good boy. There you go. There you go. So the SD or discriminative stimulus is the down command and the positive reinforcement of course is that delivery of food. Godzilla up, down, up.
Good boy! Check out the training on that animal. So up the discriminative stimulus in the presence of that signal reinforcement is forthcoming as long as he engages in the requested behavior. So he's gonna sit there until I call his name. Godzilla!
Come! Good boy. Good boy Godzilla.
Come! Come! Up! Now this time I'm gonna have him actually put his head in the water and his top jaw has to be flat with the water. Down!
Down! Down! All the way down!
You don't get a treat? No? Down!
No. Trying to get some bootleg reinforcement. Down!
He's hoping you'll give in. See, there he goes. There he goes.
Good boy! Good boy! Good boy! Up!
There you go. Good boy. That is some prime training right there.
So ultimately they're trained to walk into this door so that they can go in for the winter. So that's why we do all of this because obviously Godzilla is not easy to move unless he wants to move. So I'm going to bring him back over here. Medusa, you come first.
Come on, Medusa. Come on, Medusa. There you go.
Good girl. Good girl, Medusa. We're gonna get him to come now, okay? Godzilla!
There you go. Come on Godzilla! There you go.
Godzilla is about ten and a half feet. Good boy. Yep, he's about ten and a half feet. I didn't have any treats left so I got to get him. Godzilla!
There you are! Come on up, buddy! Godzilla, come on! Up! Good boy!
Good boy! Medusa, you wanna come out? Medusa!
Oh, you are so excited, aren't you, Godzilla? Medusa! Well, he's gonna get that one. All right, so as a psychologist hanging out with the alligators today has been really really interesting. Tell us a little bit about how you got started.
It was great having you here today. It was nice to be able to share my gators with you and get some insights. And, well, we started about 25 years ago with just one alligator that someone had given to us to take care of. of that they didn't want anymore. So one little gator and we kind of fell in love with them.
And so we took in a few more gators and realized there's a lot of people with gators. And before you knew it, our house was full of alligators. We had about 45 alligators in our house. in our house for a good 15 years. And we realized these guys live a long time.
They live a hundred years. And so we were thinking of long-term care for these animals. Obviously they're not gonna live in our house forever. So we thought, you know, let's look around and see what kind of sanctuaries are available, rescue places.
And we just really couldn't find anything. So we decided that we would just do it ourselves and built our own sanctuary and started taking in more animals from around the country. So now we've gotten alligators from over 20 states. These are all people's pets that they started out with little cute guys and then they get too big to actually have as a pet. So we wanted to have a place where they could live out their lives.
So we don't buy or sell any animals here, we don't do any breeding, but we do take care of animals for the rest of their lives once they get here. So once we started doing that, we also discovered these guys are really smart and that we could communicate with them and that it would be a lot. easier to take care of them if we could actually talk to our alligators and get them to do some things for us especially since they can't live outside year-round we had to figure out a way to get them to accept living outside in the summertime and moving indoors in the winter time so it takes a little bit of training but we actually do a pretty good job with them and they're pretty happy so believe it or not there's thousands and thousands of pet alligators just in Michigan and what we do is we rescue these alligators.
We do not go to people's houses or go out and capture any of these animals. They have to be brought to us. So what you would do is contact us, either phone, email, and say, hey, I have an animal that I wanna bring in, and we'll set up an appointment, and you can bring your animal. But we don't let people just drop them off. We don't have a box out front, a gator drop.
So it's a little bit different than cats and dogs, but we do ask people to contact us. ahead of time. So these are all donated? Most of them.
Or confiscated? Yeah, some are animal control. We'll bring us some animals, they'll contact us once in a while. And then also we actually do a training program here and we teach animal control and police to catch exotic pets.
So we'll do a training a couple times a year and they'll send their officers here. And that way when they go out on the job and they encounter some different exotics, whether it's snakes, crocs, they have a little bit of training and they can get them to come back in. They're not going in without no knowledge whatsoever and not knowing what to expect, so we try to help out. So they're either donated, and you don't buy them, and you don't sell them. Yeah.
You don't trade them. No. And you don't breed them.
Well, they actually can't breed in Michigan. It's too cold for their eggs to be able to hatch. Our soil is too cold for their eggs. So actually, north of the state of Georgia is almost impossible for alligators to breed on their own unless they were given some help. like an incubator or some sort of artificial way.
So then it's truly like a rescue facility where these animals just come live out the rest of their lives. Yeah, this is their sanctuary. So alligators here are our number one priority. So people can come and visit them and see them. But we don't do like tricks or any kind of entertainment where it involves us wrestling them or doing things with them that it's not necessarily fun for the animal.
So everything here is geared towards making the animals happy and living out their lives. So tell us a little bit more about this guy. Well as you can see alligators they have a pretty heavy skin.
It kind of feels like a tire, almost like a heavy-duty tread on the top. The side is actually pretty soft and the bottom is smooth. So it's like three different kinds of skin all in one. They got cool little hands with webbing in their feet, toenails.
Cool little thing about alligators and crocodiles is they only have three toenails. So you can see one, two, three toenails. He's got a couple extra fingers on the back. Same thing, four fingers but three toenails. Every crocodile, every alligator in the world, three toenails on each hand.
So that's kind of cool. One of the coolest things about an alligator are these spots on the side of their face. It looks like little dots.
He's kind of got them in the bottom jaw mostly, a little bit on the top, but about the size of a pinhead each dot. One of those dots has more nerve endings than your whole hand and he has hundreds of those around his face. So what that does for him is when he's in the water that gives him a lot of information of what's going on in the water. Each one of those dots is a vibration sensor and so if you're in the water with him he knows exactly where you are, what you're doing, how big you are, what kind of movements you're doing so they can actually catch things in the dark.
They can chase down a fish in pitch-black water with those dots. So it's almost like it creates a radar system for him. Their eyes are really cool. I'm going to close his eyes.
Watch when he opens his eyes, you're going to see two sets of eyelids. You'll see one moving from back to front, there it goes, and as well as his big one that goes up and down. So it's like he has his own set of goggles built right in to his eyes.
And right behind his eyes, you see his ear? It's that slot right there. Very sensitive ears.
They hear better than dogs. They hear frequencies higher and lower than what we can hear, and they're very good at distinguishing the differences between frequencies. So, for example, if you have a dog, and you name him Ned, and you have another dog, and you name him Ted, the dog hears the exact same things. They can't distinguish between Ned and Ted. That sounds the same to a dog.
But to an alligator, those are two different words, or two different sounds. So you can have two sounds that are very close and similar. But an alligator could tell the difference between those just a very subtle variation in sound. What about these teeth? They have 80 teeth.
Let's take a look at a couple teeth. Now those are top teeth. You don't see bottom teeth on an alligator because his bottom teeth are hidden inside his jaw. So we call that an overbite. If he were a crocodile, you would see top and bottom teeth crisscrossing on the outside of his mouth.
So we call that a crossbite. With a cross bite you're going to do a lot more damage to a larger animal so that's why crocodiles are much better designed to catch big animals like zebras, wildebeests, anything crossing the river. Alligators do not like big food.
They like small, tiny food. So alligators don't really see people as food. We're not on their menu. Crocodiles are different.
They see us as food. They will hunt you down. And they lose their teeth, is that right?
Yeah. Every year they get a new set of teeth. So their teeth are cone shaped and the next tooth is like a new smaller cone that pushes out the tooth. And then eventually it becomes a bigger tooth.
So their teeth get bigger every year cause they're brand new teeth coming in, replacing the old ones. So how long are these guys gonna live for? They can live a hundred years. That's a long time. Long time.
And they never stop growing. So they're gonna keep. growing their entire lives.
They can get up to 16 feet. The males can. So you see an old or you see a big, huge long gator. That's a very old alligator.
So sometimes you get alligators that are smaller than they're supposed to be or they have injuries. Tell us a little bit more about. Yeah, so the environment around an alligator can actually affect how they end up growing.
So sunshine is the main factor. If they're out in the sun, they grow the fastest. So down in the warm states like Florida and Louisiana, they've got the biggest alligators.
They're out in the sun all the time, growing fast. They can grow up to a foot in one year. So we've seen actually people that have them as pets that live in dark rooms that live 20, 30 years, and they might be this big.
So they should be way bigger, but because they were kept in the dark. Yeah. A lot of them have been stunted to the point where they're just not big at all and they're older.
So then they come here and get to go outside. Sometimes for the first time ever. Yeah. And they start growing.
Yep, they start growing as soon as they get here and also their brains change a lot because they've never been outside, they've never experienced all the things that happen when you're outside, the sounds, the smells. So it can be really stressful and that first year that they're here is always a really hard year for them to adjust. Well it's been super fun hanging out with you today and seeing how you guys train the alligators. Thanks for having us.
Thank you very much. Yeah, it was great. Bye dude.