Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,

I had read the text with the pic with Chester that you had posted. How do you necessarily recondition a crocodilians behavior? Teaching them to go to certain places and certain times and such? I am very aware that crocodilians can learn. It just seems like an interesting task to me. I am looking forward to the update on Adam Brittons crocodilian.com website, for the new addition of "Behavior" as a new topic. If you have any information to some training tips, that would be great. Training them I am sure would make them alot easier to deal with at different times.

Thanks for your interest in that topic. It is one that is too complicated to fully explian in a single post. Basically speaking, it is the same way you would train, for instance, a dog...postive and negative reinforcement of behaviors that the crocodilian is coached to learn. Also important is the maintanence of thse behaviors, through consistency and regularity.

My friend and colleague, Flavio Morrissiey, Director of Entertainment at Gatorland and a pioneer in crocodilian training (actually, it is referred to as behavioral conditioning), has a website published, still under construction, which contains papers on the subject. The link is below.
Link

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Israel Dupont
Winter Haven, FL

Correction of my previous post: The term is Operant Conditioning.
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Israel Dupont
Winter Haven, FL