{"id":6,"date":"2011-07-18T23:31:10","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T05:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/2008\/02\/24\/why-did-he-do-that\/"},"modified":"2011-07-18T23:31:10","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T05:31:10","slug":"why-did-he-do-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/why-did-he-do-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did he do that?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I received the following question about the Steve Martin article \u201cWhat\u2019s in it for me?\u201d I referenced in my welcome blog<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026 Steve mentions working with the Harris Hawk who was lazing [in] a tree too much. He said they decided to try increasing his weight instead of decreasing it, but gave no reason why. \u2026 Is there some reason why he would try increasing the weight first? Or is it implied that they had previously tried lowering the weight and it did not work? – Dr. Linda Rasmussen.<\/em><\/p>\n

Before I address the question it is worth mentioning that when we are trying to evaluate behavior it is important to only consider what we can actually observe; the facts \u2026 just the facts. If we try to base our strategies on what we think the animal was thinking we are on the road to disappointment.<\/p>\n

Also, the subject of weight or food management will be covered in more detail in a future Blog. Reducing weight should not be the first step any competent trainer takes.<\/p>\n

When I received this question the first thing I did was to go back and read the article again, this time paying attention to the section about the Harris\u2019 hawk and noting any behavioral observations that Steve reported. All that was mentioned was that the bird was \u201cplaying around in a tree\u201d and \u201ctaking too much time.\u201d In addition to noting the behavior one should also note what happened right before the behavior, unfortunately the article did not tell us that. Finally one should note the history of the bird\u2019s behavior, once again not mentioned in the article. Given this lack of information (facts) the only recourse was to contact Steve and ask him if he could remember why he had chosen to raise the weight of the bird in this context.<\/p>\n

While waiting to hear from Steve and being a curious person I pondered what might have been Steve\u2019s reasoning. The example Steve used involved a raptor (Harris\u2019 hawk) and raptors are highly food motivated. One scenario that came to mind was that if one increases food motivation too much the bird may start to look around for food itself. If the bird had exhibited hunting behaviors this may explain why it remained in the tree, waiting for prey to appear. Indeed this is what Steve reported to me; the bird was seen \u201cbouncing around in the tree, biting at bark, and footing the branches\u201d. Footing<\/a> is the behavior of a raptor grasping very hard, the action it uses to kill or disable its prey. So it seems my hypothesis was close and raising the weight was an attempt to reduce the food motivation to see if this reduced the unwanted behaviors.<\/p>\n

This is a good example of how trainers\u2019 should approach a problem; one change at a time. Too often trainers apply the \u201cshotgun\u201d approach and change several things at the same time. The result being that they may never know the real reason they changed the behavior, and so next time they need to take the \u201cshotgun\u201d out again.<\/p>\n

Thank you Dr. Linda Rasmussen,<\/p>\n

Sid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I received the following question about the Steve Martin article \u201cWhat\u2019s in it for me?\u201d I referenced in my welcome blog \u2026 Steve mentions working with the Harris Hawk who was lazing [in] a tree too much. He said they decided to try increasing his weight instead of decreasing it, but gave no reason why. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,5,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-questions","category-steve-martin","category-training","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avianambassadors.com\/BirdTraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}