Fagen et al. (2014) – “Positive Reinforcement Training for a Trunk Wash in Nepal's Working Elephants: Demonstrating Alternatives to Traditional Elephant Training Techniques.” (copy)

SPR

• Secondary Positive Reinforcement

  • One form of positive reinforcement used in protected contact utilizes a distinctive sound marker, which acts a secondary/conditioned reinforcer.

  • After using the sound marker, it is consistently followed by a primary positive reinforcer, often food.

  • Thereby, the individual being conditioned will associate the sound with a reward being given to them.

    • Primary Reinforcer= Chopped Banana

    • Secondary reinforcer= Short Whistle Blow

Study’s Aim

• To investigate whether SPR in free contact could be used to train elephants in Nepal to voluntarily participate in a trunk wash for the purpose of tuberculosis testing.

  • *The study is investigating operant conditioning

Operant Conditioning

A type of learning where behavior can be taught to be expressed more or less depending on the consequences that occur due to that action (positive or negative)

Sample

• Five Female Elephants

  • Four elephant subjects (Numbers 1-4) were 5–7-year-old juveniles who were born at the stable.

  • The other elephant subject was an adult female (number 5); estimated to be in her 50s

  • All elephants had been trained with traditional methods and none had previous exposure to SPR training

Location

Nepal

Sample selection criteria

• Selection made by facility’s staff based on

  • Docility

  • Lack of pregnancy or current calf

  • Willingness of the elephant’s handlers (mahouts) to participate in the study

  • No previous SPR training.

Sampling Technique

Opportunity

Experimental Type

• A controlled observation in an artificial setting.

Research Method used in the study

• Observations

  • Controlled

  • Non-participant

  • Overt

  • Event sampling

Type of data collected

• Quantitative

  • Minutes of training from the point at which the elephant was offered her first cue to her response to the last cue.

  • The number of offers/cues made by the trainer to the elephant

  • The success rate for each behavior and each sequence

Testing of Behaviors after training / “Success” of behavior criteria

• Starting at session 10, the elephants were tested after every fifth session.

• The elephants were tested after every fifth session

• Tested on everything they had learned up to that point

• Considered to have passed the training if they showed the correct behavior following 8 out of the 10 offers/cues (80%)

• Behaviors were judged as successful if the trainer felt that they would function adequately in a TB trunk wash test.

Experimental Design

None; This study was not an experiment

Apparatus

• Bananas

• A whistle

• Sterile Water

• A bucket

• A syringe with a saline solution

Controls

• The observer used the same behavioral checklist in each session, including detailed operational descriptions.

• The training procedure was standardized (e.x. the same verbal cues were used, and all training took place in the stalls).

How were the animals cared for?

• Elephants grazed under the control of their mahouts from 5 AM to 7AM and from 10:30 AM to 4 PM each day

• They were leg-chained to posts in open stalls for the remainder of the day/night.

• Leg chains were normally placed with both front legs chained together or on a single front leg, with a chain approximately 6/8 ft long between them and post. This allowed for the elephant to shuffle 6-8 ft around her stake

• The elephant’s diet consisted of fresh grasses and dhana (packets of grain, Nutrional supplements, and grasses)

• No conditions were made to the animal conditions for the purposes of the study

Procedure (Method; Times)

• Training method used: Entirely SPR Technique

  • Primary Reinforcer= Chopped Banana

  • Secondary reinforcer= Short Whistle Blow

• Training conducted during morning (7:30 AM - 10AM) and afternoon (4 PM - 7 PM) sessions while the elephants were chained in their stalls

• No every elephant trained during each session due to time constraints and mahout availability, but no elephant went longer than 2 days without a training session.

Procedure (Preference; Mahouts)

• Elephants could clearly indicate a preference to not participate in training sessions by walking to the other side of their stalls or simply turning away from the trainer.

• Mahouts were present at all sessions and stood on the periphery for the safety of the trainer.

  • They were clearly instructed not to speak or signal the elephants in any way during the sessions to maintain the integrity of the training.

Procedure (what the elephant needed to do)

• The elephant needed to put the end of her trunk in the trainer's hand, allow the trainer to instill saline or sterile water into the trunk, lift the trunk upward so that the fluid ran to the base of the trunk, hold the fluid there before lowering the tip of the trunk into a collection container/bucket, and blowing the sample out.

  • All of the behavioral tasks had to occur smoothly in succession so that none of the fluid was lost on the ground, and the elephant did not drink the solution

Procedure (1; beginning → SPR Reinforcement/Tasks)

• Training began by teaching the elephants the bridge between the primary and secondary reinforcer, which was achieved by repeatedly pairing the whistle blow with a follow-up banana reward.

• The elephants were then trained in basic tasks using a few elementary training tools: capture, lure, and shaping

Capture technique

Waiting for the animal to perform this natural behavior and then “capturing” it by marking and rewarding it repeatedly.

Lure technique

The animal is initially drawn into a wanted body position by strategic placement of a reward. This body position is rewarded and is used as the starting point from which to work on the desired behavior.

Shaping

• Relies on natural variation in the quality of the behaviors offered during repetition and works by rewarding only the behaviors offered that are closer to the eventual goal.

  • This rewarding of the “best” behaviors offered incrementally brings the average response closer to the desired goal.

Trunk here

The distal end of the trunk is placed gently on top of the outstretched palm of the trainer, with the ventral aspect of the trunk in contact with the trainer's palm.

Trunk up

• The distal end of the trunk is held upward either in a loose curl with the dorsal aspect of the tip of the trunk in close contact with the elephant's own forehead or is held diagonally up and outward with a completely straight trunk.

  • The exact height or angle of the trunk is not measured.

Bucket

The distal end of the trunk is gently placed inside a bucket

Blow

The elephant gives a strong, sharp exhale through the trunk

Steady

• The elephant holds the trunk still with the trunk held in the position previously requested (trunk here, trunk down, or trunk out).

  • The elephant can move his or her feet, ears, head, tail, and body slightly as long as the trunk remains still in the previous position requested.

Syringe

• The elephant holds the trunk still in the trunk-here position to have the distal end of a catheter tip syringe placed inside the nostril of the truck.

  • Up to 60 mL of saline or water is put into the trunk

Blow into Bucket

The elephant places the distal end of the trunk in the bucket and gives a strong, sharp exhale through the trunk.

Trunk Down

The trunk is held in a relaxed position with the trunk hanging loose toward the ground.

Trunk Out

The trunk is held stretched straight outward, approximately parallel to the ground.

Targeting

The elephant moves such that the center of the forehead makes

contact with the end of a targeting stick placed at the height of the forehead.

The Verbal Cues (individual behavioral tasks)

• Only after the elephant performed the individual behavioral task did the trainer pair a verbal cue with the behavior.

• Verbals cue were monosyllabic, distinctive works created to mean nothing in either English or Nepali

  • To avoid any misconception on mahouts’ part that the elephants could potentially comprehend the meaning of verbal cues (local superstition)

  
  

Abandoned Tasks (put out of use)

• Targeting, trunk down, and trunk out were introduced to some or all of the elephants but were quickly abandoned or deemphasized, as they were not needed for performance of a trunk wash.

Procedure (2; Skilled in basic tasks + blowing into bucket)

• Once the elephant was skilled in the five basic behavioral tasks, the trainer progressed to creating strings of behaviors via behavioral chaining.

  • Behavioral chaining enables separately trained behaviors to be performed in succession in response to cues.

  
  

• First, the elephant was taught to blow consistently and exclusively into the bucket (blow into bucket) by pairing bucket and blow in immediate succession.

  • The elephant was rewarded for blows made in contact with the bucket, and then the behavior was shaped for blows centered inside the bucket only

Procedure (3; Stringing behaviors + marking behaviors)

• The elephant was taught to string individual behaviors into small sequences.

• Behaviors were paired in different combinations and practiced in various sequences.

• Trainer marked behaviors at appropriate times and reinforced them at the end of each sequence

Procedure (Full Behavior Chain)

• Final behavior chain:

  • Trunk here with short steady

  • Trunk up with longer steady

  • Bucket and blow

• Once the full sequence became reliable, syringe and fluid were introduced.

Procedure (4; Desensitization + Counterconditioning)

• Syringe introduced using desensitization and counterconditioning.

• Syringe was paired with reward during “trunk here” position.

• Gradual contact with trunk tip, then nostril (outside → inside), eventually fluid delivery.

• Fluid introduction increased incrementally from 1 mL to 60 mL.

Procedure (5; Sample Medium Transition)

• All elephants began with 0.9% saline, transitioned to plain water for training.

• To prevent drinking the sample, elephants were offered drinking water at the session start.

• One elephant preferred saline and rejected water; transitioned immediately to water-only, resulting in improved success.

Procedure (6; Individualized Training Duration)

• No fixed timeline; progress based on individual success.

• Training plans were tailored to each elephant by the trainer.

• Session timing began with first cue and ended after last response.

• Missing session times were filled in with that elephant’s mean session duration.

Data Collection (1; Number of Offers)

• Each cue given was recorded as an “offer.”

• During early learning and desensitization, offers were counted even without an expected response.

Data Collection (2; Performance Tests – Overview)

• Performance tests began after Session 10 and occurred approx. every 5 sessions.

• Tests assessed all previously taught behaviors.

• Passing score: ≥80% (8/10 correct responses).

Data Collection (3; Performance Tests – Scoring & Sequence Passes)

• Untaught behaviors scored as 0%.

• Passing behaviors deemed of “sufficient quality” for trunk wash, determined by trainer.

• If a behavior sequence passed (≥80%), each individual task in that sequence got a default 90% pass.

• Failed sequences were broken down and retested.

Data Collection (4; Individual Behavior Tests – Steady & Trunk Down)

• Steady behavior tested in trunk up, down, and here positions.

• Steady could not receive a default pass since trunk down was required, but not used in trunk wash.

• Trunk down tested separately as a control behavior.

• Training was considered complete when an elephant scored ≥80% on the full trunk wash, regardless of performance on trunk down or steady behaviors.

Results (Learning Trunk Wash)

• The four juvenile elephants all successfully learned the trunk wash in the time available

• Elephant 5 did not learn the trunk wash in the time available for the study.

Elephant 1: 30 Sessions
Elephant 2: 25 Sessions
Elephant 3: 35 sessions
Elephant 4: 35 Sessions

Results (total minutes of training)

Results ( mean percent correct (overall passing rate) for all tasks during each test)

Results (Mean percent; Average sum of all offers made for each of the basic behavioral task required to pass a performance test, in isolation or combination)

Performance Outcomes (All Elephants)

• Most elephants passed all individual behavioral tests prior to or during their final testing session.

• Exceptions:

  • Elephant 5 did not pass:

    • Blow into bucket

    • Desensitization to syringe

    • Steady test

  • Elephants 2 and 4 never passed the steady test, yet successfully passed the full trunk wash.

• Success in individual tasks was influenced by:

  • Relative difficulty of the task

  • Timing of when the task was introduced during training

Concluding Discussion (1; Study Strengths and Limitations)

• Demonstrates feasibility: Juvenile, traditionally trained, free-contact elephants in Nepal can learn trunk wash through SPR alone.

• Elephants responded reliably; task acquisition was efficient.

• SPR is promising for behavioral management, voluntary veterinary care, and welfare enhancement.

• Limitations:

  • Subjectivity in behavioral pass criteria.

  • Lack of videotaping reduced data objectivity.

  • No control group; results lack comparative strength.

  • Generalization issues: All subjects were juvenile females; no males, other ages, or behaviors assessed.

Concluding Discussion (2; Recommendations and Interpretations)

• Prior SPR experience would have likely accelerated learning.

• Environmental distractions may explain Elephant 5’s failure to complete training.

• Future studies should include:

  • Objective recording (e.g., video documentation).

  • Follow-up studies to assess SPR’s role in veterinary compliance and long-term health.

  • Broader samples to explore generalization across sex, age, and behavior types.