Penguin Enrichment study
Lili ChinSeptember 6, 2021
Most of the notes I have posted here were created while watching webinars. These notes are different because the information comes from a science paper:
Training Penguins to Interact With Enrichment Items for Lasting Effects.
As I rarely read science papers, this was a tad challenging, but I was motivated enough to do this because I get to look at PENGUIN photos and videos on the internet.
This is a study done with penguins at Cincinnati zoo - where several penguins were trained to interact with "enrichment devices" (that weren't working so well at first). Then the amount of swimming and device-interactions they were doing before, during, and after the training, were recorded and analyzed. The paper is by Eduardo Fernandez, Rickey Kinley, and William Timberlake.
Rockhoppers look like the punk rockers of the penguin world!
*updated with colorful graphs
Questions that came up /stuff I wasn't clear on:
And answers by Eduardo Fernandez in blue
- I have trouble understanding the definition of "baseline" in this study. There are three observation periods, and within each one, there are THREE baseline readings. So there are a total of NINE baseline readings over 37 sessions. Does "baseline" simply refer to the sessions where there were no silversides paired (respondently) with the devices?
- In the BEFORE observation period, were the devices different ones? (not the red and blue ball?)
- I understand "Respondent Conditioning" but had to google "Autoshaping". Is classical conditioning always = autoshaping?
- I want to know if based on the results of this study, they ended up separating the Rockhoppers from the Magellanic Penguins, seeing that the Rockhoppers were hogging the pool (and enrichment devices)??
- I tried to summarize this penguin study to my husband to check my own understanding of what I had read. His response was:
Why didn't they just have live fish for the penguins to catch?
