Teaching an old dinosaur new tricks, unlocks ancient animal secrets.
“Ally," young Soham Mukherjee beckons."Ally come," he coaxes. And Ally shows up, compliant and prompt. "Ally come" he repeats. And she presses forward as commanded. He spells out more instructions
to prove his student's competence. Ally dips lower and rests on the ground to Mukherjee's "sit"; she hoists her body as if doing a push up, when he says "up". Then he instructs her to "stay".With her head tilted up, she obeys motionlessly. The impeccable student performs flawlessly with a cute leap as her response to "jump".
As the afternoon's open air sessions progress, a swarm of students watch from across a wall with plunging jaws and hisses of incredulity. The absolute and immediate adherence by Mukherjee's enthusiastic pupils could be classified as trivial amusingtricks. But for the fact that his students are a bask of crocodiles.Mukherjee, the assistant curator at the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, (MCBT) Chennai that is home to over 2,000 crocodilians of 14 different species, takes time to introduce his trainees, which include sub-adults of five species - Ally the teacher's pet, is an American Alligator,Mik a Saltwater Crocodile, Thai and Komodo are Siamese Crocodiles, Abu is a Nile Crocodile and Pintoo is a Mugger Crocodile.Mukherjee's lessons to these reptiles are also called Enrichment Training, which is part of Behavioural enrichment.To the baffled, he explains: "Animals in captivity can be extremely bored with nothing to do and so enrichment is essential to keep them happy and healthy. Environmental
enrichment typically includes providing a close-to-nature habitat (e.g. perches, logs, rocks, misting, waterfall, different smells, leaf litter, etc) to allow and encourage natural behaviour in the animals."
While "Training" or "Target Training" is part of behavioural enrichment that allows the animals to "do something" and gives them some relief from monotony, so teaching them to respond to these instructions "engages them physically and also keeps them mentally active", he says.He also points out that training the crocs is a valuable management aid. "Dangerous animals ike crocodiles go through a lot of stress while being restrained for any reasons like veterinary intervention. To make the process smooth, crocs can be trained to enter specially designed wooden crates with windows on the sides. These boxes are compact which does not allow turning around in any way. Once the crocodile goes in, you close the door and do all the necessary check-ups, administer medication, take samples for the lab, etc, with no safety issues and minimal stress to the animal.
Also crocodiles can be trained to be 'desensitised', which means taking the animal's physical comfort to such a level that it ignores and tolerates almost all physical contact. Drawing blood samples, monitoring their health and diet becomes easy when they are desensitised." Mukherjee traces his journey back to a year ago, when he first started training the six crocodiles, which are around six years old. While a keen herpetologist, Mukherjee confesses to glaring scepticism when the idea was first mentioned to him by veteran German herpetologist Ralf Sommerlad, who has been involved in crocodilian biology and conservation for over three decades. Recounting his early lessons, he says that he started with 15-minute training sessions at 3pm with each crocodile from his training group.
"Crocodiles in general are quite shy. It's only with some behavioural conditioning [associates a particular activity, on completion of which animal gets a reward - usually food, fish or beef in this case] that
they become a bit bold. Young animals are warier. They probably see humans as predators and in a captive scenario, a source of food, nothing more.Winning trust of such animals is surely a bit tricky," he admits. The first chapter of the curriculum is to get the animals to recognise their names, he reveals. Mukherjee cites Ally's example: "I'd call out 'Ally' and then throw a piece of meat. After a couple of days, she'd wade to the water's edge every time I called her name. I use a stick with which I tap the crocs gently on their snout after each command is obeyed." This first achievement, which was Ally's response, got him excited and soon he began to be astounded by his reptilian students. "It's important that the training is done at the same time every day. And each animal would get only 15 minutes; this makes them look forward to the next day's
training. And it usually takes about five to six sessions to make them learn a command." "After some intense training days, they all had chosen their 'spots' where they would come and wait for the training.
There is no training on Mondays, and every Monday you could see them getting ready at around 3pm for the
training. This meant that they were enjoying the activity. And they could calculate time of day. More amazingly, they could also calculate day of the week," he says proudlyIt isn't just crocs that hate monotony, but even Mukherjee tries to keep his classes fresh. "I am always trying to innovate and see if the crocs will respond to new commands.
So once we were through with regular target training commands
practised elsewhere in the world, I tried newer commands. Inspired by a YouTube video I taught Rambo a 45 year old Mugger Crocodile to open his mouth, and I also teach crocs to walk on a ramp, which gives them a bit of exercise."Handing out a report on his pupils, he says: "Ally is bold, but if she hears noise she'll go back. She's a good example for a desensitised croc. Pintoo learned a command by just watching me train Ally and I had never imagined that crocs could be so smart. Mik is a bit shy; it took me the longest to train her, about 15 sessions. Thai and Komodo would lunge out of the water suddenly and run in the exact same manner. I currently train 26 crocodiles. Having a dog of my own, I feel that training crocodiles is much
easier than training a dog."
When asked if he has arrived at conclusions based on the responsiveness of the animals, Mukherjee answers that Alligators and Spectacled Caimans are highly intelligent and are fast learners, Nile Crocodiles are slightly more arrogant, winning trust with Dwarf Caimans is extremely difficult, and males are bolde than females. But each individual animal has its own personality. Since the trend of training crocodiles is relatively new,Mukherjee says that Internet doesn't necessary have a wealth of 'how to train crocodiles' resources and it was Sommerlad, who is currently involved in a crocodile conservation project in Kalimantan, Indonesia, who got him started with the Enrichment Training project.
Although Target Training of reptiles is new, he says that a heartening conclusion can be arrived at: Crocs of all species, ages and sizes can be trained. Mukherjee couldn't agree more: "I was so amazed by the fact that crocodiles assess their immediate environment so well and figure out a way in which they get the maximum benefit. Learning tricks that are completely unexpected and which sometimes include problem-solving skills disproves the age-old impression of them being highly instinctive animals." While Patrick Aust, director, Madras Crocodile Bank Trust acknowledges the benefits of the training, he also views it as a powerful tool to educate people about theseotherwise conceived-as-creepy reptiles. "It helps people understand that reptiles are very much like dogs and cats and they think and interact like us. And it helps educate people about animals that are misunderstood," he says.
"Ally can respond to 10 commands," Mukherjee says like a proud father. Once Ally performs the commands and earns herself a piece of red meat. "Ally water," says Mukherjee gently tapping her snout with a bamboo stick. And she whips her tail before obediently lunging back into the water and wading to become a pair of attentive eyes.
s_elizabeth@dnaindia.net
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