csr mel said:
what is the point in having a puffer if it is bad to force him to puff? that is similar to buying a sports car and never driving it anywhere.
Since when are living creatures toys? There is a natural reason why puffers puff. While puffers are very intelligent fish it would cause the fish serious stress to get him to perform the action that your requesting. Someone previously mentioned Ivan Pavlov's dogs.
For thoughts that are not familiar with the case study:
To get his dogs to salivate, Pavlov would present them with food, placing the target morsel on the canine's tongue. After working with a given dog for a few days, Pavlov noticed that the dog would salivate before being presented with food. The dogs drooled when Pavlov entered the room. They slobbered at the sound of his approaching footsteps!
You dog owners reading this page might be thinking, "Yeah, dogs slobber when you feed them; so what?" I'm sure you've noticed that you don't have to show your dog food, just hint that food might be a possible event in the near future, and you'll find Fido ensconced in the kitchen, happily wagging his tail in a puddle of anticipatory precipitation. Dogs drool when they think they're going to eat. And that's of major importance to psychology?
It was to Pavlov. What got Pavlov's attention was the fact that salivation is a reflex and the dogs were displaying that reflex in the absence of a natural stimulus. This idea, that a natural reflex could be affected by learning, so interested Pavlov that he abandoned his studies of digestion and spent the next 30 years -- the remainder of his career and life -- investigating this phenomenon.
Pavlov's Classical Conditioning was the first model of learning to be studied in psychology. Classical Conditioning investigated the capacity of animals to learn new stimuli and connect them to natural reflexes; allowing non - natural cues to elicit a natural reflex. Pavlov developed categories and terminology to study and describe the results of his experiment.
Now let me tell you why what your suggesting wont work. Pavlov worked with a natural positively occurring unconditioned response being that the dog would salivate. This caused no harm to the animal no stress occurred and the action was immediately followed by another unconditioned stimulus being the food (which caused the unconditioned response).
Firstly the unconditioned response, puffing, is a negative response to threat in the area. You would be the cause of the stimulus unconditioned stimulus after which you would have the neutral stimulus. The order in which you step up the conditioning is wrong.
What would happen is that you would condition the puffer to be afraid of you and mostly hid whenever you drew close to the tank.
Second problem, is the order of natural of appealing Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The puffer will firstly want to save it self, from the impending threat, and if it feel secure it will move to its second level of needs which would be getting food. So, the point of you giving it food at the end it completely belittle to you causing it stress.
I'm sorry to have belabored the point but I hate seeing psychology being taken out of context and also having animals being caused unnecessary stress.
) But think of the accomplishment
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