Has anybody thought of or tried to use ecollar technology on a raptor?

[EAZFalconer]

The dog trainers have that down to a science where it is a means of communication and not punishment.

[kitana]

Well, like it or not, the ecollar is and always will be a form a punishment. Punishment means something that will stop a behavior from happening.

Punishment, in its milder and more severe forms, have been tried on almost every species that men laid their hands upon. However mildly they are, they can have bad side effects even when used "correctly" and there is always a technique available that doesn't use punishment and that will lead to the same results. That's the reason why most wild animal trainers use reward based training technics instead of punishment based ones, because they don't want to deal with the risks of nasty side-effects. Dogs are a very forgiving species, we can beat upon them, break their bones and make them bleed and they will come back to their torturer and lick their hands as if to ask forgiveness for whatever they did wrong. Most species aren't as forgiving however, thus the positive training.

[rkumetz]

It would be difficult to build a training collar that would be light and small enough to fit on a bird. That is reason 1 why it would not be a good idea.

The 2nd reason is that (as Audrey pointed out) dogs are social animals and birds of prey are not.

Yell at your dog and he puts his tail between his legs and tries to get you to like him again. He wants the alpha dog to be happy with him.

Do something like that to your bird and he is likely to slip you the middle talon so to speak and head for the hills.

There are some exceptions to this: Harris' tend to have some recognition of social hierarchy. I can grab my MHH to maintain equipment or even toss him out the window like a football but he shrugs it off and is landing on my shoulder 5 minutes later. As far as I can tell he just assumes
I am the alpha in the family group. Perhaps I am delusional but that is the conclusion I have reached.

[EAZFalconer]

It would be difficult to build a training collar that would be light and small enough to fit on a bird. That is reason 1 why it would not be a good idea.

The 2nd reason is that (as Audrey pointed out) dogs are social animals and birds of prey are not.

Yell at your dog and he puts his tail between his legs and tries to get you to like him again. He wants the alpha dog to be happy with him.

Do something like that to your bird and he is likely to slip you the middle talon so to speak and head for the hills.

There are some exceptions to this: Harris' tend to have some recognition of social hierarchy. I can grab my MHH to maintain equipment or even toss him out the window like a football but he shrugs it off and is landing on my shoulder 5 minutes later. As far as I can tell he just assumes
I am the alpha in the family group. Perhaps I am delusional but that is the conclusion I have reached.

With dogs, ecollar training is not associated with the trainer. The good trainers don't use voice commands at all in the field except for a command to heal and one to come here. Most of the ecollar training is done as a tickle and associated with check cord training but they do have higher settings that hurt that would be called punishment. But with the punishment, the dog associates it with the action not with the trainer.

[hawkerev]

Well, like it or not, the ecollar is and always will be a form a punishment. Punishment means something that will stop a behavior from happening.

Punishment, in its milder and more severe forms, have been tried on almost every species that men laid their hands upon. However mildly they are, they can have bad side effects even when used "correctly" and there is always a technique available that doesn't use punishment and that will lead to the same results. That's the reason why most wild animal trainers use reward based training technics instead of punishment based ones, because they don't want to deal with the risks of nasty side-effects. Dogs are a very forgiving species, we can beat upon them, break their bones and make them bleed and they will come back to their torturer and lick their hands as if to ask forgiveness for whatever they did wrong. Most species aren't as forgiving however, thus the positive training.

Have you ever ecollar trained a dog ?

[kitana]

Have you ever ecollar trained a dog ?

No, and I will never. I will never stop someone from doing so however, I respect people's decision on the matter. But my formation enables me to train behaviors without using aversives of any kind, so if I ever want to use an aversive, I'll take a few moments and think about a way to avoid it, and if I have to ask more knowledgable people with more experience than I have (read: professional animal trainers, usually zoo and marine mammals trainers, or dog clicker trainers) I'll do it. There is always a way around it, sometimes it's easily found, sometimes it needs more thoughts, but a large part of my job is to treat dogs submitted to punishment (no matter how mild they can all have side effects) and I won't take the chance to see these problems arise with my own animals, be they dogs or cats or hawks.

[outhawkn]

Well, like it or not, the ecollar is and always will be a form a punishment. Punishment means something that will stop a behavior from happening.

Punishment, in its milder and more severe forms, have been tried on almost every species that men laid their hands upon. However mildly they are, they can have bad side effects even when used "correctly" and there is always a technique available that doesn't use punishment and that will lead to the same results. That's the reason why most wild animal trainers use reward based training technics instead of punishment based ones, because they don't want to deal with the risks of nasty side-effects. Dogs are a very forgiving species, we can beat upon them, break their bones and make them bleed and they will come back to their torturer and lick their hands as if to ask forgiveness for whatever they did wrong. Most species aren't as forgiving however, thus the positive training.

You dont understand how to use it properly then.............

[kitana]

You dont understand how to use it properly then.............

No, I fully and thoroughly understand the use of an ecollar, probably even better than most who use it. I studied the principles at lenght. I could describe it to you in details in OC terms, as well as what happens in the brains biochemistry when the animal receives the shock (no matter how small the shock is), what pathways are modified for life after that and how it can go wrong, biochemically and thus behaviorally, even when the training is well done. I could also go on and on about what happens when humans are "trained" with an ecollar, which is frankly quite funny in a desperate kind of way (Julie Shaw from purdue University did this experiment if you want to know more). But I will never convince no one to stop using it, and no one will never convince me it is needed nor it can be used with a 100% safety margin, so I'll leave the discussion as it is for it not to be thrown off path.

To my eyes, the real questions are these:
1)What unwanted behavior do you want to modify using an ecollar?
2)What behavior would you want to see in place of the unwanted one?
3)How can this (or these) behaviors be modified with a similar result without the use of the ecollar.

[andy hall]

Here is my question and functional analysis about e-collar use

Did the unwanted behavior significantly reduce in frequency?
yes - then it is punishment
no - then it is abuse

I have used them and even sold them for a few years. Have not touched one in 13 years, and have a much higher success rate for training. The idea of using one for a bird is completely deplorable to me. There is no situation that I could see it being effective with a bird (or almost any animal for training purposes).

Andy

[rkumetz]

Here is my question and functional analysis about e-collar use

Did the unwanted behavior significantly reduce in frequency?
yes - then it is punishment
no - then it is abuse

I have used them and even sold them for a few years. Have not touched one in 13 years, and have a much higher success rate for training. The idea of using one for a bird is completely deplorable to me. There is no situation that I could see it being effective with a bird (or almost any animal for training purposes).

Andy

I agree with this. The collar is designed to provide negative stimulus when the animal presents some undesired behavior. It essentially works on the premise that dogs (being smarter than people) will adhere to the "if it hurts then don't do that" principle.

What sort negative behavior does one expect to counter with a collar?
Carrying? Not returning to the glove? With the exception of screaming I can't think of any behavior which might effectively be deterred using a negative stimuli such as a collar.

When we were kids we used to want to fill our fishing tackle boxes with all of the latest gadgets. My dad would remind us that if you don't know how to fish all the junk in the world is pretty much useless. Granted that is a simplification but at some point training boils down to establishing a relationship with your bird and learning to read it. Nobody would ever mistake me for someone who would miss the opportunity to build a better mousetrap but you always need to think whether or not what you are trying is a better mouse trap or a pet rock.

[outhawkn]

Here is my question and functional analysis about e-collar use

Did the unwanted behavior significantly reduce in frequency?
yes - then it is punishment
no - then it is abuse

I have used them and even sold them for a few years. Have not touched one in 13 years, and have a much higher success rate for training. The idea of using one for a bird is completely deplorable to me. There is no situation that I could see it being effective with a bird (or almost any animal for training purposes).

Andy

What if I'm using not to stop an un-wanted behavior but to produce a desired behavior?

[outhawkn]

No, I fully and thoroughly understand the use of an ecollar, probably even better than most who use it. I studied the principles at lenght. I could describe it to you in details in OC terms, as well as what happens in the brains biochemistry when the animal receives the shock (no matter how small the shock is), what pathways are modified for life after that and how it can go wrong, biochemically .

Your telling me that a stimulation so small that I cant feel it is going to adversely affect the dog biochemically...............
Could you point me to the research?

[kitana]

Your telling me that a stimulation so small that I cant feel it is going to adversely affect the dog biochemically...............
Could you point me to the research?

If it's so small that you can't feel it, it won't affect the behavior at all. If it affects (stop) the behavior, it is therefore strong enough to be felt, and if it strong enough to be felt, it can have deep effects on the mental of the animal.

The resources about the side-effects of punishment are widely available, more than that they are widely vulgarized for regular people without a degree in psychology. If you look up Jesus Rosales-Ruiz research on poisoning the cue, and continue from there, you will be on your way to get a better understanding of punishment and reinforcement. Plus, many of the articles on this website (http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/index.htm), although not all of them are from post-graduate researchers such as Jesus R-R, are bringing excellent infos to ones who want to understand. And finally if you are really interested, grab Temple Grandin's book "Animals in translation", it will blow you away, but it is not an easy read. It goes in depth about fears, consequences of punishment and fear, etc, but is still understandable by the general public.

[TiercelR]

The neck is a very vulnerable area for a raptor, but maybe if the system is placed on the backpack along of the transmiter, so its weight will be well distributed, and its antenna do not will be pendant from the neck of the raptor as pass with both the neck-mounted transmiters and bells.

[grimmy440]

in my mind, birds of pray are much more intelligent, and more capable of reason, than dogs. unless you are going to leave the ecollar or ebackpack on at all times, the bird could come to associate you attaching it with the negative stemuli. it may even become severe enough that you couldn't attach telemetry or any other equipment.
just some food for thought

[awleaphart]

I use them on my Feist,
They work well on a dog. Some have a beep for the page. The one I have vibrate. Im training a new dog right now and only use the vibrate on the collar and it has been working great. I main use it for the Come here command. After about 6 months you don't even need the collar any more.
Anthony

[Captain Gizmo]

Dogs and hairless monkeys are pack animals. A combination of negative and positive reinforcement works in a social context. Humans have a fair instinctive understanding of the workings of the dog mind. Even with pack animals behaviors ingrained by positive reinforcement have a slower extinction rate than behaviors generated with negative reinforcement.

Hawks are essentially solitary animals. They have enough forward planning capability to recognize a cue signalling a delayed reward from a behavior. Their ability to link a negative reinforcement is very limited. By and large the negative reinforcement must be very immediate and have no social context to be effective.