Magazine Training

To magazine train Princess Fi-B, she needed to find the food hopper. Then, she had to associate the sound of the hopper with the presentation of a food pellet. We began this by consistently reinforcing her each time she was near the hopper. Once she found it, we reinforced her each time she took her head out of the food hopper.

We were assisted by our TA Madeline and began this session at 3:02 pm. At first, Fi-B was a very curious rat. She thoroughly explored every corner of the operant box before making her way to the food hopper. She also reared up quite a bit along the sides of the box. There were many periods of grooming and sniffing around as well. I expected all of these things to happen based on what I learned from completing the Sniffy program. Princess Fi-B had quite a few funny moments. My favorite was when she would try to stick her head into the hopper to grab the food held in the chamber. Her body would twist and turn in every direction trying to reach it. By the end of the 30 minute training session, Princess Fi-B seemed to catch on to the idea.

We will begin shaping Fi-B during our next training session.