PETERSBURG — The groundbreaking venomous snake training program at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center earned two awards at the American Association of Zoo Keepers conference in Toronto last month.
That’s right — the venomous snake training program.
Joe Whitehead, the amphibian and reptile (herp) program coordinator, and Meredith Bashaw, professor of psychology at Franklin and Marshall College, received the Author of the Year award for their article, “Can You Teach an Old Snake New Tricks? Transitioning from traditional management to choice and control training with Viperid snakes.” The article appeared in the December 2021 issue of Animal Keeper’s Forum, the journal of the AAZK.
Whitehead and his coworker, Shannon Davidow, Shaver’s Creek’s lead animal ambassador, won the Paper of the Year award when they presented the results of their snake training program at the conference.
Whitehead joined the SCEC staff in 2019 and decided to expand the positive reinforcement training program used with aviary birds, with a version adapted to the resident reptiles and amphibians, including their venomous snakes — a copperhead and three rattlesnakes. He believed the animals could benefit from positive interactions with staff, increased activity and enrichment.
Except for some work with cobras, he couldn’t find any training programs for venomous snakes. He asked himself, “What behavior can we teach them that we can mold to other behaviors?”
“Targeting is a very useful behavior,” he said. “We started with it because we thought we could use it for other behaviors.”
To find a targeting method that would work, Whitehead considered how snakes perceive their world. He said they can see heat and have limited color vision. They sense vibrations and use their sense of smell. “It takes imagination and a lot of empathy to work with them,” he said.
For targeting, his goal was to have the snake show interest in a target or approach it, then reinforce those behaviors with a food reward. “We didn’t want them to touch the target. We gave them a food reward when they got in proximity to the target.”
He sanitized the targets so they didn’t smell like food and adjusted the target temperature so it was easier for the snake to recognize it, since snakes rely more on smell and detecting heat than on vision.
He hoped that he and his coworkers could repeat the targeting process in multiple steps to guide the snake to travel to a desired location, such as the bin used for weekly weighing.
Whitehead and his team experimented with different targets and found that a small colored ball on a wooden dowel worked well. With patience and repeated training once or twice a week, the snakes were able to learn the desired behavior.
“When we started this, we didn’t know how it would affect their behavior overall,” Whitehead said.
Prior to the targeting program, the venomous snakes were lifted on hooks and moved into bins with lids for their weekly weighing and to service the enclosure. The snakes had no choice.
One of the timber rattlesnakes, Leo, would frequently rattle and strike, showing that he was stressed. He was on public display but was not a good ambassador for his species.
Whitehead said, “I wondered how can we help him?”
Leo and Arabella, the female copperhead, were their first training subjects. After the training program began, Whitehead saw changes in their behavior.
“Leo became like a puppy,” Whitehead said. “He’d perk up like a periscope and come to the front of the enclosure. It happened almost immediately when he could tell us no. We gave him a voice and he was a different animal.”
He said if Arabella is interested in participating, she will meet staff at the door of her enclosure. She has learned to travel out of her enclosure, down a short ramp and into her weighing bin without being handled, which is safer for staff.
If a snake is not interested in participating in an activity, he said the staff will wait for another time when the snake is responsive. “If you let them say no, you’ll be surprised at how often they’ll say yes,” he said. “Reptiles have better memory than we give them credit for,” Whitehead said. After a year off from training due to Covid, Arabella still perked up when she saw the target.
He said she’s a very curious animal and seems to be very visual. “Animals are easier to train when they are more visual.”
“We’re trying to understand them and what they’re telling us so they have a voice,” he said. “Their half of the conversation is body language and ours is training.”
The other two Shaver’s Creek rattlesnakes have joined the training program.
Whitehead quoted Australian wildlife conservationist Steve Irwin. “Humans want to save things that they love.”
“Maybe if people see us training the snakes, people might care about them more,” he said. “Zoos are trying to have people have meaningful connections with their animals. We’re focused on trying to get people to care about the animal as an individual. When they go home, it may expand to the species. By just getting them to care about a resident animal, we hope they’ll want them on their property.”
When asked about the snakes, Lisa Hayes, the SCEC marketing and engagement program director, said, “They’re very well loved. We know them all by name and we check on them. They’re treated like friends, coworkers and students.”
This story appears in the Nov. 17-23 edition of The Centre County Gazette.
