Trained snakes

[anerybree]

http://www.floridatoday.com/article...-snake-research-could-rattle-scientific-world

In case you don't want to read the article, I'll give you a synopsis. So this guy at a university is doing research on heat pits in snakes and how well they sense prey, which is pretty cool in itself. But he also trained them to push a button with their nose in order to get food--I thought snakes couldn't be trained? It's clearly a very simple thing they can do, but could the training be elaborated on?

 

[hypnoctopus]

Wow, that is pretty awesome. I'd love to see a video of these button-pushing snakes in action.

 

[Christen]

Very interesting

 

[sleater]

I don't see why snakes couldn't be trained. Isn't taming down a fearful snake a form of training? The one of the goals of taming is that the animal learns that behaving badly/fearful/aggressively won't change it's environment. So in effect, you have modified the snake's behavior, and if you can do that much, all the principles of behavior modification should be applicable. This guy just took a step further--compared to what most snake owners would do anyway.

As far as behavior modification goes, this is an incredibly typical form of training: Animal is placed in an empty box with only a button or lever. Animal accidentally pushes button/lever. Animal receives food/reward. Animal eventually associates pushing buttons with food, and so you have an animal that is inclined to push buttons. You can look up Skinner boxes or B.F. Skinner himself to get a more in-depth idea of how this works.