Amazing trained turtles!
Marie the Box Turtle makes her film debut in this CMTM target training clip.
This summer, our intern Marley worked on target training our eastern box turtles (and Museum & Theatre ambassadors), Marie and Arnie. Target training involves training the turtles to tap their nose on a cherry ball. Once completed, Marley clicks a clicker and administers a treat. Marley used their experience with operant conditioning and dog training to help them understand how to approach this
project.
Since Marie is more food motivated, Marley started training her first. Marley put strawberries on the cherry ball to entice her to go toward it to get her to associate it with food. The strawberry helped Marie to associate the cherry ball with a treat. Marie was tapping the ball in no time, but Arnie had a bit of trouble learning. He was not interested in the cherry ball, so Marley researched how aquariums train their sea turtles. They decided to tap the cherry ball on Arnie's nose, press the clicker, and
administer the treat. Marley's experiment worked! After Arnie was introduced to the cherry ball, he would go towards it on his own.
The project's next phase is to train Henry and Morty, our aquatic turtles.
When asked about the challenges that might arise when preparing the aquatic turtles, Marley said, "You have to be able to understand the individual to know what is going to motivate them."
After college, Marley plans on going into fieldwork. This project has helped them know box turtles' cognitive abilities and behaviors, allowing them to better understand turtles in their natural habitat.
Thank you to Marley, our summer intern class of 2022, and Marie and Arnie for all their hard work and support this summer.
Read more about our interns HERE