Information on Dog, Cat, and Bird Behavior from Companion Animal Solutions
Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB
I recently gave a presentation on applied animal behavior to a wonderful animal advocacy group on the Micronesian island of Guam. I was on the island on behalf of my wife’s (Dr. Renee Ha, UW Psychology/Animal Behavior) research on the endangered Mariana Crow, and I offered to meet with the local shelter group, GAIN (Guam Animals In Need) to do a little education… and ended up getting an education myself.
Katherine Ayres, PhD
Kelley Balcomb-Bartok, photographer NMFS permit 532-1822
When I told my parents that I was going to train dogs to track whale poop from the bow of a boat for my Ph.D. dissertation, they must have laughed for a good twenty minutes straight. When the initial laughter burst had subsided into giggles, sighs and the wiping of hilarity-induced tears from their eyes, I said, “No really, that’s what I’m doing for my dissertation,” and I did.
How did I happen into this strange and fascinating project? Truthfully, I just stumbled into it. After college, I wanted to contribute to the world in an effective way and I really wanted to help endangered species. That’s when I came across a website for a Conservation Biologist who was doing ground-breaking research. His name was Dr. Sam Wasser and he was pioneering new methods in wildlife forensics (think CSI, Wildlife). He was using sophisticated DNA techniques to track illegal elephant poaching. ‘This is cool stuff!’ I thought and I really wanted to be a part of it. [Read more...]
Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB
An interesting paper appeared in a recent issue of Behavioural Processes (2009, vol. 82, pp. 355). The author, William Helton from New Zealand, examined results from three published studies in which breed and head shape were reported, to answer the question of whether morphology (head shape, in this case) reflected intelligence in dogs. Now, a little background because there a lot of caveats associated with this work.
James Ha, PhD, CAAB
I have expressed my concern about confrontational behavior modification techniques in earlier blogs: the use of “positive punishment” or dominance and pack theory-based techniques, especially in the hands of untrained users, has been shown to be ineffective and to produce negative side effects. Hiby and colleagues demonstrated that positive reinforcement techniques produced a significantly better response to obedience tasks than did positive punishment techniques (see references below). Blackwell and colleagues showed that dogs trained using positive reinforcement methods were less likely to exhibit later behavior problems while dogs trained using punishment were more likely to exhibit later fear-related behaviors (see references below). These are just some examples: there is an expanding literature on the significantly greater effectiveness of positive reinforcement techniques as well as the lack of effectiveness of aversive or confrontational methods, methods which are related to incorrect ideas about the role of dominance and pack theory in dogs. [Read more...]
Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB
The modern science of animal behavior, which we call ‘ethology’, has come a long way in the past few decades, from a largely observational, descriptive science to a modern, quantitative science based on solid foundations of evolutionary biology and quantitative methodology. One of the most common situations in which I realize this is when I see, read, and hear old, out-dated animal behavior concepts and ideas and long-ago-rejected hypotheses used by pet animal behaviorists. Many trainers and veterinarians received whatever animal behavior education they might have gotten long ago, and often have not stayed up to date. As a professional and academic ethologist, I of course have the time and professional need to peruse the latest journals, read and review the latest textbooks, and make sure that my university courses are up-to-date. But when I enter the world of companion animal behavior, I am often taken back to a time long, long ago, to terms presented even to me in my long-ago introductory courses as historical concepts, mistakes, or simplifications used only for pedagogical purposes. [Read more...]
James Ha, PhD, CAAB
Here’s a question for all of you dog trainers (and that should be just about everyone who has a dog)… how often should you train a dog? Many of us in this business would, of course, say, “as often as possible… please!” But that is not quite what I mean: from a scientific point-of-view, what is the optimum frequency of dog training… once a day, once a week, once a month? Again, many of us would answer, “as frequently as possible, within the attention span of our dog.” But surprisingly perhaps, there is very little information in the scientific literature about the optimum frequency for training, especially for dogs.
A few trainers like Bailey (1995) and Abrantes (2000) have provided some guidelines, generally “from once [Read more...]
Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB
Behavior has many causes: this is a general statement that many people believe is true, and it often causes people to extend the conclusion to one that suggests that we can never understand behavior, that it will always remain a black-box mystery. But of course, as professional animal behaviorists, academic or clinical, some of us have set ourselves the goal of understanding the causes of, and therefore the modification of, just that behavior that seems so complex.
Of course, as is so often true, the answer that we see depends on the focus that we bring to the question. To a professional animal behaviorist (let’s use the more modern name for one who studies animal behavior: an [Read more...]
Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB
I recently attended a conference of companion animal behavior practitioners and researchers, held in New Orleans this past March (see earlier blog entry). One of the most interesting, and most important, presentations at the three-day meeting was titled, “Assessing Behavior and Training Methods Using Physiological Measures.” This was a summary, and a very interesting demonstration, of the work by Nancy Williams, Peter Borchelt, Alice Moon-Fanelli, and Megan Bulloch that has suggested that heart rate, a relatively easy measurement in awake (ie, behaving!) animals, can provide insight into the activity of the brain.
The logic comes from some similar work in humans, and goes like this: good, healthy behavior is flexible behavior, that is, behavior which exhibits an appropriate selection of responses to stimuli, and that shifts as [Read more...]
Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB
I am sitting in the New Orleans International Airport, waiting for my (much delayed) flight to Atlanta (severe weather!), and on to home in Seattle. The purpose of my travel to the Big Easy, and specifically, to a small hotel with conference facilities in the French Quarter, was to attend something called the Interdisciplinary Forum for Applied Animal Behavior (IFAAB). IFAAB brings together, by invitation only, no more than 30 of the top Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists (CAABs) and Board-certified Veterinary Behaviorists in the country. Each attendee must make a presentation to their colleagues, presentations designed to stir up discussion and even dissension as much [Read more...]