jajeanpierre
Chameleon Enthusiast
I decided to put my money where my mouth is and try to train a behavior to one of my Veiled chameleons. I had thought I would only post when I had the finished behavior, but I'm a pretty lazy trainer and putting the plan up front before I started might be enough to motivate me to actually DO the training.
I'll work with my young female veiled since she is my one true glutton. Although she is less tolerant of any sort of handling when compared to my male veiled, she is the one who will gorge herself when being hand fed.
The Behavior:
I want to train her to step onto a scale to be weighed. That might have to be modified to just training her to step onto a stick since the scale might need to be on an open flat surface that she might not be comfortable with.
Training Plan:
Teach her to touch the end of a target stick (a chopstick) with her nose. Once she will touch the stick, up the criteria to have to move her feet to reach target stick. As she becomes more fluent in moving to touch the target stick, increase distance and direction she must move, all within her enclosure. Eventually, have her move up on the scale in order to touch the target stick with her nose.
I'm not sure how I'll introduce the scale. She has been weighed, but was not happy about it and exhibited escape behaviors while being weighed. I think I'll introduce the scale on some sort of high platform in front of her open cage door when she is proficient at touching the target stick and see if she will continue to work in its presence. Then I will know how much work I will need to do to desensitize her to it.
All her food will be delivered during training sessions or immediately after. The difficulty will be to get enough repetitions in before she fills up. The less problem-solving skills of an animal, the more repetitions and the more critical the timing of the bridging cue to mark the correct behavior needs to be. I'll use very small crickets and roaches. Training sessions will be every other day.
Problems I Foresee:
I suspect chameleons are not very intelligent and will need many, many repetitions to start to understand the problem I am asking them to solve. I would like to find some sort of audible marker to mark the desired behavior. Clickers are used by a lot of trainers, but I don't think the frequency of the click sound is discernible to a chameleon since I've read their hearing seems to be limited to the lower frequencies. I'm thinking of getting hold of a low-frequency tuning fork. Another option is to rig up some sort of non-threatening light that I could flash to mark the desired behavior and the coming reward. Suggestions appreciated. With animals not known for their problem solving abilities, timing of the marker cue to bridge the time the animal performs the target behavior and receives their reward is more critical than for animals that can generalize better.
Day 1 Goal: Have Emma move towards target stick using baiting strategies.
Picked out about 10 of the smallest roaches I had, dusted them and put in a dish. In left hand, held target stick and bowl of roaches. On my right hand was a small roach. Presented target stick to Emma, about three inches away from her face. She immediately moved towards it down a vine. Immediately removed target stick, bowl of roaches and moved right hand with roach a little closer so she could snap it up. Repeated until roaches gone. Gave her her very first hornworm and called it a day. Not sure is she ate the hornworm but can't find it.
Day 2 Goal: Have Emma touch the target stick with her nose. I'll try to capture the behavior by having the target stick closer to her so as she moves down the vine towards my hand (so far, I am just luring her towards me with the roach on my hand), she accidentally brushes the chopstick. I'm hoping my immediate withdrawal of the chopstick and my moving my hand (and the roach on it) closer to her will be enough of a marking cue that she starts to learn to learn and I can start shaping the behavior. I hate juggling things like clickers when I am training so would love to find that she doesn't need something like that. Most animals pick up the non verbal cues the trainer gives long before the trainer is able to mark the behavior anyway.
I'm really happy I was able to get forward movement in the presence of the chopstick. I could teach this completed behavior (moving to and touching the target stick) to a parrot in about a minute, but I can do a lot of reps pretty quickly with itty bitty pieces of nuts. I can cut one peanut into 10 pieces, which is a very small amount of food for the parrot. I can't do that with a chameleon. Insects need to be whole and live. I'm going to experiment on how to hold a small cricket. I wonder what kind of a "glue" I can come up with. I thought of honey, but I don't think that would be healthy for a chameleon. Is there some kind of commercial feeder food that would be sticky and hold a really small cricket?
I'm not sure if anyone other than me is interested in my experiment with training a chameleon, but I think it will give me a lot of insight into the inner workings of a chameleon's mind. I'm really thrilled that Emma was so responsive during the training session.
I'll work with my young female veiled since she is my one true glutton. Although she is less tolerant of any sort of handling when compared to my male veiled, she is the one who will gorge herself when being hand fed.
The Behavior:
I want to train her to step onto a scale to be weighed. That might have to be modified to just training her to step onto a stick since the scale might need to be on an open flat surface that she might not be comfortable with.
Training Plan:
Teach her to touch the end of a target stick (a chopstick) with her nose. Once she will touch the stick, up the criteria to have to move her feet to reach target stick. As she becomes more fluent in moving to touch the target stick, increase distance and direction she must move, all within her enclosure. Eventually, have her move up on the scale in order to touch the target stick with her nose.
I'm not sure how I'll introduce the scale. She has been weighed, but was not happy about it and exhibited escape behaviors while being weighed. I think I'll introduce the scale on some sort of high platform in front of her open cage door when she is proficient at touching the target stick and see if she will continue to work in its presence. Then I will know how much work I will need to do to desensitize her to it.
All her food will be delivered during training sessions or immediately after. The difficulty will be to get enough repetitions in before she fills up. The less problem-solving skills of an animal, the more repetitions and the more critical the timing of the bridging cue to mark the correct behavior needs to be. I'll use very small crickets and roaches. Training sessions will be every other day.
Problems I Foresee:
I suspect chameleons are not very intelligent and will need many, many repetitions to start to understand the problem I am asking them to solve. I would like to find some sort of audible marker to mark the desired behavior. Clickers are used by a lot of trainers, but I don't think the frequency of the click sound is discernible to a chameleon since I've read their hearing seems to be limited to the lower frequencies. I'm thinking of getting hold of a low-frequency tuning fork. Another option is to rig up some sort of non-threatening light that I could flash to mark the desired behavior and the coming reward. Suggestions appreciated. With animals not known for their problem solving abilities, timing of the marker cue to bridge the time the animal performs the target behavior and receives their reward is more critical than for animals that can generalize better.
Day 1 Goal: Have Emma move towards target stick using baiting strategies.
Picked out about 10 of the smallest roaches I had, dusted them and put in a dish. In left hand, held target stick and bowl of roaches. On my right hand was a small roach. Presented target stick to Emma, about three inches away from her face. She immediately moved towards it down a vine. Immediately removed target stick, bowl of roaches and moved right hand with roach a little closer so she could snap it up. Repeated until roaches gone. Gave her her very first hornworm and called it a day. Not sure is she ate the hornworm but can't find it.
Day 2 Goal: Have Emma touch the target stick with her nose. I'll try to capture the behavior by having the target stick closer to her so as she moves down the vine towards my hand (so far, I am just luring her towards me with the roach on my hand), she accidentally brushes the chopstick. I'm hoping my immediate withdrawal of the chopstick and my moving my hand (and the roach on it) closer to her will be enough of a marking cue that she starts to learn to learn and I can start shaping the behavior. I hate juggling things like clickers when I am training so would love to find that she doesn't need something like that. Most animals pick up the non verbal cues the trainer gives long before the trainer is able to mark the behavior anyway.
I'm really happy I was able to get forward movement in the presence of the chopstick. I could teach this completed behavior (moving to and touching the target stick) to a parrot in about a minute, but I can do a lot of reps pretty quickly with itty bitty pieces of nuts. I can cut one peanut into 10 pieces, which is a very small amount of food for the parrot. I can't do that with a chameleon. Insects need to be whole and live. I'm going to experiment on how to hold a small cricket. I wonder what kind of a "glue" I can come up with. I thought of honey, but I don't think that would be healthy for a chameleon. Is there some kind of commercial feeder food that would be sticky and hold a really small cricket?
I'm not sure if anyone other than me is interested in my experiment with training a chameleon, but I think it will give me a lot of insight into the inner workings of a chameleon's mind. I'm really thrilled that Emma was so responsive during the training session.
