Classical conditioning video

[owen]

thats awsome. A friend of mine had a mantis egg sack hatch, so he said he would give me a couple babies...there super cool little dudes

[BWSmith]

Originally Posted by razeraze

Actually for a long time they would fly every where but to us. So we started at closer distances and gradually built trust and their attention. Getting them to fly to us instead of all over the room was much more difficult than you would think.

BW much of conditioning is taking a natural response and just improving on it. Much like teaching horses to run collected or grey hounds to race. They have it in them but repetition through conditioning gets them to do it repeatedly with out getting sidetracked.

I contacted an entemologist regarding this:
me: "Please view the following video. This strikes me more as exploiting a natural behavior in mantids rather than training them. It seems that most wild mantids when on your hand will eagerly fly up to a higher perch if given the opportunity."

His response:
"I agree with your observations. Can we really "train" insects? Their
neural systems are efficient but not really cognitively "advanced"."



Yeah, I'm not buying it. Next you will have a video of how you taught roaches to scamper under the stove when the lights come on

[owen]

im no Dr. Phil...but Im sensing some tension between you two

[razeraze]

Thats all right BW I could care less if you buy it. I grow less and less found of your thoughts every time we speak. Seeing how insects are capable of learning and there have been publishings about this (here is what a half second search turned up Mechanisms of Learning (Behmer Lab))
I would suggest you ask your entemologist if something is capable of learning why is it not capable of training? Here is one of my favorite examples:
BBC News | SCI/TECH | Bees to 'sniff out' explosives
I have used the bees to defend my clicker training my savannah monitor for many years now. Simple forms of life learning, too bad we can't teach the more advanced forms to accept it.
Again using instinct to preform a desired task repeatedly. It is instinct for men to walk upright yet every day I see parents "training their kids to walk".



Owen the only thing I hate about mantids is their incredibly short lifespans.

[owen]

Originally Posted by razeraze

Owen the only thing I hate about mantids is their incredibly short lifespans.

true, I loved the little flower mantis. It was so cool. Im looking forward to getting a few more...these new ones are chinese mantids though

[BWSmith]

What does clicker training monitors have to do with insects? I clicker trained alligators before, not a major accomplishment. A bug and a lizard are quite different.

Originally Posted by owen

im no Dr. Phil...but Im sensing some tension between you two

No tension, I just have cats so I am compelled to throw litter down when I smell crap Neither the insect nor the human in the video are doing anything noteworthy.

[razeraze]

True I guess there is a huge difference between a lizard and a mantis as well as a grass hopper and a mantis or a bee and a mantis, BW if I didn't know any better I would say you and your cronies are prime supporters of intelligent design, nothing on this planet seems to have anything in common with something else.

Perhaps I should be putting the litter down, but then again you are a human and probably could not figure out how to use it.

And I agree that video is nowhere near as ground breaking as the bees but again this was the first attempt, later we had them flying to us every time we put our arms out and made a clicking noise.

Here is something else for the advancements in insect to human communication:
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/...files/1.11.pdf

[JuliusSqueezer]

Too many flea circus cartoons? Bugs can't learn tricks. Even the bees sniffing out explosives didn't learn a trick...they were fooled to be attracted to it by having it added to their food and so now confusing the smell. That's not "learning"...It's associating. Any trick like activity as seemingly spectacular as it may be that any bug does, like ants building bridges or bees doing their little bee dances to tell the hive where food is, is all hardwired instinct.

[BWSmith]

Originally Posted by razeraze

And I agree that video is nowhere near as ground breaking as the bees but again this was the first attempt, later we had them flying to us every time we put our arms out and made a clicking noise.

I must have missed that video. You posted a video of a natural behavior and attached unsubstantiated claims. Sorry if it smells like crap, but you just can't seem to provide valid arguments on most subjects. Many of your "sources" can and do on various subjects, but you, yourself, lack that ability. The evidence that you provided illustrates nothing other than you own a video recording device and found a mantis. You could have said that after that video it went in and made you pancakes. Think of it this way. I have a nice video of a cottonmouth crawling off the road and into the grass. This is a natural behavior just like your mantis video. It would be like me claiming that the cottonmouth video is evidence that I taught the snake to fetch. See the similarity? You should because the comparison is GREAT.

[razeraze]

Again walking is an instinct yet parents "teach" their kids to walk. How do you think the bomb dogs were tricked into finding bombs? Whispering sweet nothings in their ears? Nope food was the reward. I would encourage you to look up the baby albert test. A child was tricked into fearing rodents by the same methods "stimulus response training". "tricking" is a great way of teaching.