Research supports the theory that snakes can be conditioned to perform new behaviour tasks to receive a food reward. What does this mean for learning abilities across species?
Sarah Jones
Comparative Cognition – Queen’s University Photo Credit: Katla Srikanth
In a recent study by Emer, Mora, Harvey and Grace, published in Animal Cognition in 2015, it was discovered that Burmese Pythons were able to be effectively trained to not only change their eating habits, but to complete tasks that a python would not typically do in the wild. Interesting? Studies such as this one impact the biological world in that it can influence the study of species evolution, including not only behaviour, but sensory biology, physiology and even memory.
In this particular study, researchers used a ‘modified shaping behaviour’, which involved the reinforcement of continuous behaviour, to train wild Burmese Pythons. The pythons were trained to approach and press a button (which was lit up) in order to lift a door and subsequently gain access to a food reward. Most of you probably have some knowledge of Pavlov’s dogs? This study identifies a similar process in that the snake presses the illuminated button and receives a food reward and soon associates the food reward with the button.
Pre-Trials
To test the feasibility of this study, a captive-bred juvenile Burmese …show more content…
It means that the snakes involved in the study appear to have learned to change their natural behaviour and that they were able to learn a new skill based on a training/reward system. According to researchers “learning was demonstrated by decreased latencies over the course of training sessions, and by the fact that latencies in each training session decreased significantly between the first and final trials.” Another interesting fact is that snakes continued to display this new behaviour throughout their skin shedding period even though the training trials were stopped during this time