#operant conditioning

Hello, have you seen any rabbits?

No? Neither has he… my useless son… but he did *kind of* chase some quail today

I will praise you. Every time you do exactly as I say? “Good girl.” Told me how you really feel? “Good girl.” Faced a fear? Finished a task? “Good girl.” It’s not just a catchphrase—it’s your clicker signal. Simple and consistent.  

And good girls deserve rewards. Well-behaved pups get kibble. You? You get your pussy played with—but only if you earn it. 

Operant conditioning is the association between a behavior and its consequences. For example, a frightened child who is abused anytime she asks her father for help will stop asking her father for help, as she now associates this behavior with punishment. A hungry child who is rewarded with food every time he is abused will learn to wait for abuse, as he now associates surviving the abuse with positive reinforcement. Programmers use punishment and reinforcement to discourage behaviors that imply resistance and encourage behaviors that indicate compliance.

A warning in advance for this potentially off topic response… I can’t help myself when it comes to owls. I am a wildlife educator, and I must educate.

IN PREP

I have only prepared one Barred Owl and it was actually the first bird I did, and it was before I learned proper technique at my undergrad museum. I just did spread wings and feet for biofacts. I should do a full skin though, and might have an opportunity soon! I’m running a work shop in April teaching spread wings at a conference, and I’ll probably bringing a few Barred Owl wings since my current museum has so many*, so I should do one of the skins when I get back!

IN AMBASSADOR EDUCATION

I do know a good deal about Barred Owls, but mostly from working live ambassador Barred Owls at my college raptor program. Before I get on my owl soapbox, I think it’s important to acknowledge that owls are amazing birds but I’ve had so many negative experience working with them that it potentially influences the way I talk about them.

Owls are objectively incredible birds with amazing adaptations and fascinating life histories. However, they are also notorious for adapting poorly to life in captivity when they matured in the wild. So a lot of raptor centers have nonreleasable owl ambassadors that came into wildlife rehabs too injured to be released and then were placed in education, and unfortunately these owls often don’t adapt well to human care. They typically never get over their fear response or develop positive associations with people. Instead they develop learned helplessness so they’ll sit apparently “calmly” on the glove, but they’re actually chronically stressed and have to be forced to interact with their handlers. A happy raptor should be enthusiastic to work with their human handlers and anticipate being rewarded for performing behaviors. Wyatt (my falconry bird who I started working with at the education program) immediately flies to the glove or the scale when I begin sessions. Most owls consistently perform escape behaviors (crashing into walls trying to fly away, or aggressing) and have to be restrained with gear to get on the glove.

Larger owls (Barred Owls and Great Horned Owls) seem to be the most challenging at least from my anecdotal experience, I’ve known of a few Screech Owls and a Northern Hawk Owl who’ve adapted well to captivity. Our Screech Owl, Odin, was amazing. I never had any of our other owls enthusiastically fly to my glove.

Odin being adorable and readily engaging with training

I do know one center that’s been successful with wild Barred Owls (Shaver’s Creek! Awesome center! They even train their snakes) but they don’t do offsite glove education with their owls. They’re just on display at the center. We were at a serious disadvantage because we HAD to do offsite education so birds had to be restrained on the glove and taken to other places for programs. People couldn’t just come see them in their aviaries.

I worked with four Barred Owls in undergrad (Luna, Buddy, Oscar, and Skye). Oscar was my favorite but mostly because his spirit never got broken (maybe I watched Spirit too many times growing up?). But that just meant that he continually tried to attack his handlers instead of developing learned helplessness. Also he was a slightly unusual color: more olive brown grey than the usual Barred Owl grey. Fortunately for Oscar, he was rehomed to a center that’s could do display education (less stressful than glove education) and lived with a mate for his last couple years. None of these owls ever took food on the glove (sign of comfort and crucial part of positive reinforcement training, you can’t reinforce a behavior of the learner refuses to take the reinforcer). Honestly working with them and seven other nonreleasable rehab owls was soul sucking. So I’m unfortunately a little anti-owl now.

Oscar, a beautiful owl; I hope he had a happy of short retirement

But I really want to work with an imprint owl someday, and hopefully develop a positive mental relationship with owls again! Because they really are amazing birds! They just have tiny little brains that aren’t super good for learning new things…**

More and more centers are moving towards human imprint owls (either owls that come into rehab really young or captive bred owls) and these birds are so much happier as ambassadors! They can be socialized with people before they develop a fear responses. People in the US have mixed reactions to captive bred raptors in captivity but they’re really common in other parts of the world (in the UK you basically can’t do education with wild raptors). Raptors in education should have the highest welfare possible, and a lot of the time this means a captive bred bird. And a lot of the time, humane euthanasia is the kindest thing you can do for a nonreleasable owl.

IN GENERAL

As for random Barred Owl facts outside of education! They’re Strix owls so related to beautiful Ural Owls and Great Grey Owls (and also Spotted Owls)!

They’re originally native to the Eastern US but have been spreading West since deforestation has lead to more open woodland habitats. Spotted Owls strictly prefer old growth forest, and Barred Owls are a lot more generalist.

They mostly eat rodents like most owls, but also really like crayfish. It can make them turn sort of pinkish (Source: the captive Barred Owls at Shaver’s Creek)

They’re highly territorial and are known to attack people (my mom has been mobbed a couple of times).

Pairs duet together, and they’re known for their “who cooks for you” call.

Like many owls, new feathers fluoresce pink under black light so you can age feathers really accurately.

Spotted Owls are named for the spotting on their chests, so people assume that Barred Owls are named for their chests pattern too. But their chest is actually streaky. They’re named instead for the barred back feathers (think barred rock chicken if you’re familiar) that both species share. As far as I know, Europeans just “discovered” 🙄them first… so they got the more general name, and then Western science had to come up with something more specific for Spotted Owls.

I hope that answered your question, and wasn’t entirely off topic… ambassador raptor welfare is something I am really passionate about, so I can’t resist an opportunity to discuss it.

We decided to try kind of like an operant conditioning set of suggestions. So he hypnotized me that if I was agreeable and submissive and obedient and pleased him that I would feel happy and proud and aroused. And that if I displeased him, if I was disobedient or sassy or was dishonest I would feel incredibly guilty and ashamed until I apologized and corrected my actions until the scene ended.

It was a total head trip. At first it was a challenge to even test it fully because I was so disinclined to displease him that it was hard for me to even think of anything to say to test the second set of conditions.

I finally managed to think of something and say something sarcastic and the feelings were so strong I wanted to curl up in a ball and immediately apologized.

There were a couple of moments like that, like at one point he asked me a question about what I was laughing at and I said nothing specific and he asked me if I was lying and it felt like somebody threw cold water all over me and I immediately apologized and told him a more specific answer.

But a really really trippy part, was he told me that he would be unhappy with me if I didn't talk in third person speech and refer to myself as it.

And the first thing I tried to say used the word 'I' just out of habit and the immediate wave of guilt that I got followed by the immediate wave of arousal because I was really turned on at how all of this was working was super intense.

First off, operant conditioning is conscious learning. The subject changes their behavior in response to a learned outcome. This is different from classical conditioning, which is more involuntary (Pavlov's dog involuntarily drools at the sound of a bell because it is associated with food). You can use classical conditioning bridges with operant conditioning, but this is just the basics.

There are 4 types of operant conditioning: Positive Reinforcement, Positive Punishment, Negative Reinforcement, and Negative Punishment. In some cases, the lines beweteen these may blur, depending on how you define the target behavior. The basic idea is that the subject adjusts their behavior by learning the consequences of their actions.

It is a common misconception that "positive" means "good" and "negative" means "bad," but that is not the case.

Positive = something is added

Negative = something is removed

Reinforcement = goal is to increase the behavior

Punishment = goal is to decrease the behavior

So, if you add something pleasant to encourage the subject to perform a behavior, that's Positive Reinforcement, which most people are fairly familiar with. If I give you a cookie every time you water my plant, your performance of watering my plant will increase because you want the cookie. This is considered the most effective form of operant conditioning.

On the other hand, if I add the stimulus of a harsh scolding or even hit you when you drop my potted plant on the ground, because I don't want you to do that again, that is Positive Punishment. This is considered the least effective form of operant conditioning.

Negative Reinforcement is removing an unpleasant stimulus when the target behavior is performed to encourage performance of the behavior. How this differs from Positive Punishment is in the nature of the target behavior and the timing. When I turn my car on, it makes a very annoying sound until I buckle my seatbelt. The removal of the annoying sound reinforces the behavior of buckling my seatbelt. Where this could get blurry is that it could look like the sound is something added to punish me for not wearing my seatbelt. However, wearing my seatbelt is the target behavior, and the sound is the default state of my car immediately after it is turned on. The sound itself is not the consequence of me not wearing my seatbelt, but the removal of the sound is a consequence of me buckling up.