Day 11, September 28th, 2010

Holy wetsuit, Batman!

Not being dive certified is certainly a downside to my job (for many reasons), but today made me reconsider becoming dive certified. I was told to bring my bathing suit today and possibly tomorrow because I would be cleaning the windows in the otter exhibit from the water. I thought I was going to be doing this alone, so when the second semester intern, Amy, showed up with her bathing suit as well, I was quite excited to have a partner in this odd job. We went to the third floor (where all the dive equipment is kept) and found random wetsuits to wear. I’ve never worn a wetsuit before, but when I was watching our water quality lab technician getting into hers last week (struggling to get into hers), I was a little concerned. Of course, they have to be super tight-fitting in order to keep you warm, right? Well, not knowing what size I should be wearing, Mindy handed me a specific size and said that it might fit me, and if not, I should just find another one. I tried to get that one on for about ten minutes before failing miserably and actually getting stuck in it. It was a mess. I grabbed the next size up, and I’m still not sure that it was the correct size, but I made it work. It was the biggest struggle EVER. It probably took me about twenty minutes to get it on, and I still felt super uncomfortable in it. It felt like I was in a spring-loaded suit where every movement I made, the suit pulled me back to my neutral position. Trying to get used to the feeling, I walked with Amy back down to otters and we gathered our supplies. Wetsuits are funky because they’re super buoyant (yeah, I know that’s the point, but still) and it’s sort of hard to anchor yourself in the water. It was fun, though, because I enjoy being in the water. Cleaning the windows was pretty similar to cleaning the windows in tigers, except that we were in the water. No big. But make no mistake– I’m not in a hurry to do it again, even if it means I get to hang out with the divers…

Today I was asked to clean and feed shorebirds and the ducks by myself for the first time! When I was feeding the shorebirds, I sneaked a fish from the dish (ha) and hand fed the Caspian tern because I know he’s trained to eat from our hands. It was still pretty exciting.

Vocabulary that I’m learning or need to remember–

Superstitious behavior – a side behavior that an animal incidentally did when he/she was learning another behavior and which was reinforced so that the combination behavior is what the animal thinks is the complete behavior (i.e. if a tiger is learning to put his paws up against the cage and turns his head when he’s learning the behavior, and he thinks that the head turn was part of the behavior, too, so he continues to do it)

LRS – least reinforcing stimulus – ignoring the animal you are training for a few seconds because he/she performed the behavior incorrectly; a sort of ‘reset’ button

that’s about it for now… Haven’t begun working on my project yet, other than observing Blue and Slater (our otters) for about ten minutes today… they both do backflips out of and back into the water, over and over again and it’s almost sickening to watch. I would really like to do something about it. Here’s to hoping.