Why Are Seals and Dogs So Talented?

This past May, I took a family vacation to California, and oh boy, do I miss it. Anyways, when we were at Sea World in San Diego, the last show that we say of a seal/sea lion show. Even if you have been to the Memphis Zoo, you have probably seen seal and sea lions perform right?

It was a hot day, and my family and I were getting tired. We decided to see one last show before heading out. Oh man, did we choose wisely. As we sat down and were waiting for the show to start, I looked at the stage and saw the trainers practicing with the seals and sea lions. Every time they had done a trick correctly they got a fish. At the time, I really didn't think anything of it at the time. Of course they would give them fish, because in their wild habitat, that is what they would eat anyways. So basically, I thought of it as a simple snack.

This past week in class we had started the unit on learning. There are three types of learning, but I want to focus on one particular one, called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning can be described as when an organism's behavior is reinforced by its consequence. Now the fish for a trick thing made sense. I can now understand that the trainers were giving the seals and sea lions fish as positive reinforcement. The fish, being the positive reinforcement, made the seals and sea lions think that, "oh, maybe if I do that trick again, I'll get another fish!" Because of this amazing concept of operant conditioning, Seamore, the sea lion can entertain America!

Besides, positive reinforcement, there is also something called positive punishment. Now, I know what you might be thinking, how can punishment be positive. We must not think of punishment as a bad thing because in psychological terms all it means is doing an action to make a behavior stop. For example, when my dog was puppy and was not house trained, he used to pee all over the house. When he did so, we called him over to the puddle and stuck his nose in the pee. I mean, I don't think pee smells so good, so between that and taking him outside to pee as often as possible he learned not to pee in the house. So, let me break it down. Leo peed in the house (the behavior that we didn't like), we took his nose and stuck it in the pee (positive punishment because it was adding something to make the action stop), and he eventually stopped peeing in the house (desired response). Leo is just so smart! (I love funny memes)