Prosopagnosia...

its whats for dinner!


Seriously though, tonight I wanted to talk about Prosopagnosia aka "face blindness".

Face blindness is essentially the inability to recognize people from just their face. There are different nuances to the condition that I wont get into, but I will start off by stating it effects people differently. Some people can't even recognize their own family, at all. Without a contextual cue. For example a man can come home and know the woman in the house is likely his wife, and act accordingly. Yet if she surprised him in the grocery store he'd have no clue who she was unless he recognized her outfit. This is because theres no context to cue him as to who she is. Without context she could be his mail lady for all he knows.

I'm no where near that severe. However there is a noticeable deficit now that I deal with reasonable amounts of people on a daily basis. I really can't think of any instance of this happening in childhood or even early adulthood, but I don't doubt it existed. I've never had large circles of people around me and my contexts were pretty limited, so there really weren't any situations to bring it to my attention. No proverbial wife to surprise me at the grocery store.

Today I had a client in class. This is one of my regulars and I noticed she didn't bring her husband like she normally does. When he arrived later during class, he hung back for a while watching. I always like to play the game in my head of "who does the guy belong to" and see if I can correctly guess who's husband had showed up. To my startle (or rather not) he belonged to my regular client.

This wouldn't be profound except I've met the guy probably about 15 times now. I've had conversations with this couple. At length. But without him being next to her for context, I would have sworn I'd never laid eyes on him.

This is just one of countless examples I could bring up. Sometimes people arrive and I recognize the dog and not the owner. AT ALL. These are people I've spent time with. One time I had two owners reversed in my mind. Like they had swapped dogs. I'd even fudged the dog context. Instead their body type PLUS the dog was the context and when two people with the same body types showed up at the same time, my brain found them interchangeable.

I have a theory however.

Face blindness is pretty much considered either Brain damage or hereditary. I know I was never dropped and I already know there's some odd genes present in me so we'll run with that a bit. The thought with it being hereditary is there is an actual physiological difference causing the impairment.

I hate the word impairment. Firstly.

here's the slippery slope. I CAN remember faces if I want to. If you asked me to remember a persons face I CAN do it. More and more I am reminding myself to do so, for careers sake. This would suggest the ability is in fact intact but my brain is just not running the program automatically.

Also I remember some people automatically and others my brain simply skips over. Its picking and chosing  which faces are important to attend to, and thus, who it can remember at a later date. I can pass all the celebrity face blindness tests I should add.

So I took this one. Without famous faces.

http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/index.php

Overall I scored decent. 85% was my lowest score, and on one of the tests I got 100%. So what the heck gives?

I got bored.
 

During the test I had to force myself to focus on the faces. Focusing on a task is what I do best. I am the exact opposite of ADD. I tend to be understimulated.  I can handle and process a very large (non social) information load. In fact I'd say I can handle pretty large social loads as well as long as its not direct interaction (for example, noisy crowds don't bother me) I also pick up on details others do not. Pretty much I'm an info junky in every sense of the word and if the environment isn't stimulating enough I get very bored. ( aka most of my childhood) In this case I found my eyes kept leaving the screen and my mind would wander in the middle of it. It was so unlike me that I was pretty startled. I am the test taker, the task doer, the finish things quick and now. I'm not the kind of person to wander off mentally in the middle of something.

Yet, as I suspected, this is what my mind does when confronted with human faces. It wanted nothing to do with the task at hand. I could feel my mind saying "c'mon theres gotta be other stimuli here thats way more important". And when I ignored its whining, it tried to leave the room anyway.

 I remembered the asymmetrical eyes and the odd teeth easily and struggled with the rest. Pretty much my brain is an information junky and unless I find something entertaining, odd, or distinctly memorable, my mind decides its uniportant and that the texture of the carpet is more interesting. Basically, my brain decides that recognizing and remembering faces is not important and instead attends to the other cues as to who the person is.

This makes me wonder how much of the typical eye contact issues are less about being uncomfortable and more about our brains saying its an unimportant behavior . Then as you age, society demands it and you feel awkward about it because it wasn't ingrained as a child. Your brain sees it as an "expensive"  behavior and not worth the calories it burns. After all, people aren't the most interesting thing in the room, most of the time.

 I will also note that while I have no issues with giving or receiving eye contact typically, I find if I'm tired, overstimulated or lazy that day, or don't find that person important (like someone bothering me), I'll fall into not looking at people, like a habit. I'm not uncomfortable with it, its just too much effort for no real benefit to me as far as information gathering if I'm conserving energy. When taxed I'll spend my calories on other things that will reap more benefits. You aren't thinking about digestion when your running from a lion.

So pretty much my physiology is saying; Social interactions are not important unless its someone you find interesting. This seems to match up with my behavior in other, more tangible realms.

Fascinating, but nonetheless, it basically means that if I recognize you at the grocery store, your in a good place in my mind :)

How much is that monitor in the bathtub?

How much is go-ing on upstairs?

I know my blog has been a bit reptile-centric lately, but bare with me. Reptiles are a huge part of my life in the summer months, mainly due to babies being born en masse. In winter and spring I can breed them and still have other hobbies and a life in general. Once babies are born, its like having a human child, everything else gets put on hiatus til things get settled.

I've been thinking more and more about intelligence in Varanus Salvator the Asian Water Monitor and pretty much monitors in general. Humans generally view intelligence in animals in the form of modified behavior. Aka what can it do for me? Thus regular people confuse trainability with intelligence, and trainers can occasionally mistake trainability for intelligence. Regular people think the trained dog is smarter than the untrained dog, when really nothing has changed as far as intelligence. Trainers teach a chicken a few behaviors and suddenly have to question if we are eating little Einsteins.

I personally think the truth, as usual, is in the middle.

Teaching behaviors and modifying behavior gives you a window into intelligence.  The interaction becomes two way and you can communicate with the animal vs simply observing it. It's in this communication that you get to see whats going on upstairs, or not.

Little Fran is about 16 months old now and my initial goal was simply taming the animal (my hand is not food, and don't run away from me are basic "taming"). My other goal was to have a monitor who is comfortable being groped, carried and lifted (desensitization).  I didn't do this with Sammi and now that shes 20lbs, its not really feasible or worth doing. Especially since her cage is on the floor, theres no real need. When  I interact with Sammi physically I get the vibe of being tolerated, and I didn't want this with Fran.

 I put some time into it and now Fran is very comfortable with being manipulated and carried, and took to it in very few sessions. He moves around a bit more than I'd like, but that's just teenage spunk and normal IME. Theres no fear of being dropped or that vibe of " I'm just tolerating this" that I so disliked.  Its hard to say until I rear another monitor from birth if this is a personality difference (genes), a born in captivity difference (cortisol levels), or early experience difference (socialization)

We have a bathtub we use for cleaning and sanitizing big items in the rear of the store. Its a bit scratched up and well used. Historically Big Fran was given baths in this tub and the practice disappeared when Tim left and  Big Fran was sold. I decided to try it out on both Sammi and Lil Fran to see their reactions.

Sammi, perhaps stressed from being lifted and carried to the tub, seemed pretty disinterested and quickly grew bored and tried to leave the tub. Sammi likes water, as is normal for this species, but didn't like the tub experience. She ignored me for the most part, acting like the traditional animal automaton. All instinct and no mind.

Sammi, uninterested, trying to leave.

Fran on the other hand was full of notable behaviors.

Firstly, he did not try and leave the tub as I had anticipated. This being a new experience I expected an initial response of fear resulting in him spooking. As would be normal for his age when exposed to a novel enviroment.

 I was quite surprised when this did not occur. He did sit there for a minute or so, unsure what to do with himself. He made eye contact with me during this, as if looking for guidance. I told him it was "OK" and began to point at the water. I had already taught that "OK" is a safe word and a release and had introduced pointing* previously. (*Monitors learn what pointing is so quickly it would be easy to mistake it as innate if you aren't paying attention) Immediately he began to explore the tub in the spots I pointed to.

Then the first face dip under the water, seemingly on "accident" or instinct.  Followed with what is known in mammals as an "approval glance". The animals way of saying "is this OK  with you for me to do?" by hesitating and making eye contact. He did several of these to each I nodded and said it was "OK" to do. He quite enjoyed face dipping after that.

He wasn't understanding he could swim in that depth of water so I grasped him and pushed him around a bit like a toy, all while giving verbal approval. He did not object and seemed to like it.  He then began to experiment with swimming, each motion was punctuated by another approval glance (three, just like for face dipping) and thus he decided it was ok with me, and began to swim.

The really interesting thing happened when I got bored and tried to walk away after 15 mins of this. When I did this he immediately stopped what he was doing and stood tall to see where I went. I stood out of sight and watched him for a minute or so. He sat there and waited for me until I walked back to the tub and then he relaxed and began to play again.

Fran seeking approval with eye contact.

If I hadn't told you this was a monitor, it would be easy to write the same story about a dog playing in a pool for the first time. Unsure, until the human encouraged them and upset when they were left alone. The amount of eye contact would rival a domesticated animal, as would the response to my voice. Fascinating stuff, in my mind. I have not done any formal action/reward training with food yet. I did this with Dino and he was an incredibly quick learner, but like Sammi did not seem to care about me at all. It will be interesting to see what an animal that is "bonded" to a person will learn when I start clicker training him. I could put social and verbal feedback into the loop on top of primary reinforcers (or lack thereof). I'll have to see, but I have a feeling that the trainability of such and animal and intelligence (aka problem solving) meets or exceeds the abilities of a dog.

If so the moral implications of keeping such animals in cages, or at least small boring ones,  will have to be explored.

Stay tuned.

Skateboarding Mexican

I attempted to teach Chili the skateboard about 6 months ago but his fear of it outweighed anything I could offer him.

He learned what I wanted but was too frightened to stick with it. So I put it away for half a year and brought it back out on friday.

I think he just gave fear the middle finger...

Taming Monitors and Iguanas.

When people ask me how I tamed a big lizard, the explanation I reach for is simple. Trust.


A wild animal that trusts you will not be afraid of you. If its not afraid of you, its aggression will vanish. Aside from injuries, and over the top feeding responses its pretty safe to attribute all reptile aggression to fear. This article does not address animals with aggressive feeding responses but rather aggression that isn't food related.

Sadly, the common thought and even advice that people have received is to tame a monitor or iguana you should take it out of its cage and HANDLE IT. Handle it handle it handle it. Not only should you handle it, you should handle it TONS, the more the better.

I won't say this doesn't work for some animals and in certain circumstances, the second I say that, people will be shouting the opposite. But what is safe to say is handling backfires and flat out doesn't work on most of the  highstrung animals people purchase. I know this because I've been there when people give up the animals they had high hopes for because it wont tame down or even becomes more aggressive than before. There are also a number of animals that start tame and become aggressive due to interaction with the handler.

There are two main reasons "handling" will not tame your aggressive lizard.

Firstly, most people are going to become increasingly frightened or wary of their pet as this goes on. This will unconciously affect your body language, how you grip the animal, how you hold it etc..Generally the turning moment were you will not "win" and theres a downward spiral is when the animal bites you. People who get bitten immediately drop the animal, put it away, or otherwise disengage it. The lizard has learned that you will ignore all his other warnings and that he must bite you to make you go away. Once the animal learns that biting works he will resort to it faster each time you handle him. In fact he may abandon all his other warnings and just nail you right away on the very next try. Monitors in particular are very intelligent for a lizard and I've personally witnessed two trial learning occur on multiple occasions. Its important to prevent bites but extra important to try to not react much when it bites you. You don't want it to learn that biting "works". At the same time you should recognize that its time to put the animal away, just don't drop it like its hot so to speak. You want a few moments to pass before you set it down if possible.

 The bitten owner will no doubt ably be nervous during the next handling session (lizard bites are extremely painful), OR completely give up, often giving the animal away.

The second reason "handling" will not tame your aggressive lizard

An animal that is struggling, running away, defecating on you, biting you, tail whipping, etc etc is very very frightened. When you interact with him and he does these things, he builds the association that you are SCARY.  You are not to be trusted, you will do scary, uncomfortable things to him. Each time he sees you there is already that bad history there.

You wouldn't tame a feral cat by picking it up and hugging it everyday would you? How about a tiger? Its the same concept. The animal is terrified and is likely not going to submit to you. He's wild and undomesticated, hes not thinking, hes just going on instinct, and instinct says that big animals (you) that grab him and restrain him are going to eat him.


Another commonly overlooked portion of the handling paradigm is that the animal is removed from the cage for the "taming".  The lizard goes from small, comforting, familiar surroundings and sure footing to a huge room with moving floor (your hands) often 4ft off the ground if the person is standing. Reptiles find small spaces comforting, and big spaces scary. Baby animals get eaten if they blow their cover. Baby monitors hide, brave juveniles and ADULTS walk around. They know they aren't food.

I am of the opinion that an Iguana or Monitor should NEVER be forcibly removed (aka, picked up) from their enclosure while they are gaining your trust unless its absolutely necessary. Their cage is to become their Home base or safe spot and they will climb out on their own or even better, onto you, when they trust you.

Front opening cages are best for taming lizards. The top openings of aquariums require you to hover over the animal which is threatening for them. When you slide open a screen top, to their eyes, the whole sky just moved and a monster appeared. Its better to have glass doors in the FRONT that you can open as little or as much as possible.

 Desensitization, hand feeding and BAT.

Firstly, its important to let your lizard simply acclimate and have a strong desire to eat before attempting any training. New homes are stress full to any lizard and many monitors and iguanas are wild harvested. They need to settle in first and for most.

BAT (behavior adjustment training) was developed with dogs and horses but work very well on reptiles in my experience. You just have to tweak it a bit. Instead of the lizard walking away from the scary thing, you are going to walk away from the lizard.

BAT is part about pressure and part about rewarding appropriate responses. This is the first step I use when working with an aggressive animal. Followed by hand feeding and eventually lifting.

You are going to place your hand in the cage with the animal (putting pressure on). First as a fist, and eventually as an open hand. The fist is very important in the early stages so no fingers get bitten. I prefer to show the animal the back of my hand if they are to the side of me or the top of my hand if they are directly in front. We want it to look like too big of an object to bite if it comes to that accidentally.

In this exercise the removal of your hand is the reward for good behavior.(taking pressure off)

Place your hand just barely inside the cage. The animal needs to see you do this. If it doesn't react, remove your hand from the cage. After a few seconds repeat. Hand needs to completely disappear between repetitions. Do 5-10 of these exercises then end the session.

If the animal reacts slightly to your hand being in the cage (puff up are the most common) just rest it there for a few seconds to see if the animal will settle. The moment they calm down, remove your hand.

If your lizard panics you will have to start slower and have your hand near the glass but not actually in the cage. If your lizard completely looses it, abort the session and try again the following day with more distance.

For VERY aggressive animals you will have to walk towards the cage and then away when they don't react. You leaving is the reward for being calm. Wait for moments of loose body language, coming towards you in curiosity, eye pinning or even licking your hand. These are all things you should reward.

As the animal progresses you should begin to talk to it to accustom it to human noises. This is a trigger for some lizards so it should be worked on.

As you progress you should vary the locations of your hand, adding different heights, motions, duration etc. All these things need to be added slowly. If your animal panics or gets aggressive, you've moved too fast and should go back a step. They will learn faster if you go slower. Every time you frighten them you are straining the trust you just gained. GO SLOW. You will have this animal for ten years or more if its young. There is no hurry.



"Hand" feeding is the quickest way to get your lizard to interact with you if its not otherwise aggressive or as the next step after you have done BAT.  If you are taming a monitor, I recommend teaching a bowl as a hot spot. Think of it as a vending machine. The monitor learns that food appears only in the bowl, which makes it a valuable training tool. The monitor will associate food with the bowl and not with your hand. Contrary to popular belief its ok to have the monitor associate you with food. You simply must add the extra structure to it to prevent being bitten. I do not like tongs or tweezer for this because they mirror the motions of our hands and that may confuse the animal in the early stages. I do believe tweezers are a valuable tool but not for this instance.

Start by feeding in the bowl for a few days to build the association. The bowl needs to be small or medium sizes and easy to manipulate. If the monitor will come up to the bowl with you present place one insect (or mouse) in the bowl and then place in the cage in front of the lizard. If using pinkies be sure to keep your fingers as tucked in as possible to prevent a feeding mistake.

Let the Monitor eat their morsel and remove the bowl completely from site. Then immediately repeat. Do this as many times as the animal will let you for several feedings. Be sure to place the bowl in different spots to make it clear that the bowl produces the food, not the "left side of the cage" or "on this one branch" etc. The goal here is to create a bowl hot spot so the animal will not be looking for food in other places. This is also desensitization because you are repeatedly putting your hands in the cage and then removing them.

For iguanas, if the animal has shown to be a bitter in the past, use the bowl method as described above, for all others feeding from the fingers is OK. I find that many fearful iguanas will refuse to hand feed on their normal food. They certainly have a hierarchy of favorite foods. Flowers (hibiscus, nasturtium etc) and fruit will generally convince the iguana to feed from your fingers when normal greens fail. Experiment with different foods to find your "high value" treat for training.

When you are hand feeding your iguana, its important that the animal has to take at least one step to get to the offered food. Iguanas have a tendancy to "glue" themselves to a spot once they calm down and you want to prevent this. If you place the food in its face, it will likely panic, as you have come into its space too closely or it will simply learn to "glue" down and not come to you. Having to take a step towards you and then feed reinforces that walking towards you is the right thing to do. As this progresses, you will want to have the animal walk further and further to get its reward, culminating in feeding on the edge of the cage.

This is where the first actual lifting should begin. Place your finger or hand on the animals chest for just moment. Do this a few times. If they object, go back a step. If they don't mind, start using pressure (as if to lift but don't actually lift) for just a second or two at a time. You will likely have to distract with food during this first session. Don't push it, end the session while your ahead.

Superman! Time to fly

This is where counterconditioning comes in. You are going to begin to "levitate" or float your pet for brief moments about an inch off the ground, then immediately feed/reward them. I introduce a clicker at this point because of the obvious delay between being lifted, set back down and then fed. Monitors and iguanas learn what a clicker is in two trials, so there is no need to load the clicker, just use it. I lift, click, then set the animal back down and present the reward (the hotspot bowl). Lather rinse repeat. You will need to work on height and duration SEPARATELY. If you add height, decrease duration and visa versa. If they begin to get frightened, end the session, TBH though, by this point I've never had an animal spook out. They do not leave the cage at all during this part of the training. The safety of the cage is working with you still. 


 Time to come explore!

When its time for the animal to start exploring outside their cage its important that they know how to get back to home base. As the animal trusts you more and more it will begin to ask to come out of its cage. Its important that the lizard is conditioned to being lifted and "levitated" for brief distances by this point because its your job to put them back in before they panic. Your lizard will have a pattern at this point;


Walk up to cage door and ask to come out.

Walk out of cage onto you or a surface

See something scary, be it a thing or another person OR they realize they are to far from home base for comfort.

Become overwhelmed and panic. Running at random, if your lucky they'll run back to their cage.
 

Its your job to put the lizard back BEFORE it spooks and freaks out. If you put the lizard back before it panics it will generally immediately try to climb back out again. This is good. Let it come out again, about the same distance, then put them back again. You'll find you can't get rid of them, they just come right back at you. This repeated in and out will desensitize the animal to the room at large. Its getting exposed to the same thing, over and over at low levels and learning that nothing bad is going to happen. Its also learning that it'd rather be with you than in that boring ol' cage.


Your Monitor or Iguana is going to be TOO BRAVE and then quickly turn into TERRIFIED during its first trips out of the cage. Its your job to curb their enthusiasm so no one gets hurt. If you think they can handle 6 inches, let them come out 2inches three or four times then end the session. This is also good practice for being carried and riding on you. They are like little kids that just can't help themselves. Be the parent.

You can introduce food at this point if you so choose, to reward brave (but not too brave!) behavior outside the cage. Make sure to use your bowl hot spot if you are feeding a monitor.

As time goes on you can add more and more freedom. If you want to carry your lizard, wait until they are acclimated to the room and then practice walking around in the room for several days at minimum before moving on to other parts of the house. A harness is a good idea for going outside.


In my experience, if people follow the above protocol you can have an aggressive iguana or monitor tame in aprox  30 days. There will be variation of course, but don't expect an overnight magic wand . Trust takes time! Be slow and methodical and you wont regret it. You will have a better pet, and your lizard a better life!

Hold still biatch!

So I can make sweet snakey lovins to you.

Bacons

Chili has learned very quickly that putting his chinny chin chin on the bartop is the best way to elicit bacons.

Its not attractive. It is effective ime.

The dragons are biting.

If it has a mouth...it bites.


Dogs bite, cats bite, shit...fish bite...HUMANS bite...ask any cop or preschool teacher...


I get this "does it bite?" question ALOT. I always say that if it has a mouth it can bite you...If its som'thing that tends to be docile, I say "these tend not to bite". I can not remember a time in recent years where I've told som'one an animal was not going to bite them, in an absolute :never: way.

I find myself, more and more pondering peoples motivations behind pets. I mean, I was one of them, so I can understand it on that level, but I have "moved on" in many ways...as in, I like to have animals, but the need to go out and actively acquire new ones is a need that has left me for the most part.

I once was a consumer. Iam still, technically a producer. Even though I have for the most part shunned my former breeding operations, I still produce animals professionally, and due to my "career" assist novices in producing animals. Helping the novices, tends to produce more ill feelings than me producing my own animals, due to the sheer number of people who have bad motivators...and then here Iam, being the one having to deal with aggressive offspring from aggressive parents, having to baby non feeder snakes, which can from parents that were likely non feeders, and having to find homes for, or euthanize animals born with birth defects, when their producers reject responsibility for them

Ah, to cull or not to cull. Iam all for culling, in the spay neuter sense. As in, this dog is not perfect, lets bar it from breeding, but spare its life, and find it a home. But in reptiles, its not so easy. I can't spay/neuter a bearded dragon, and no matter how well I screen people, every year, som' tool decides that that kinked tail shouldn't stop lizzy from having babies. Or the School teacher, that year after year, produced tiny, pathetic, weakling bearded dragons, that grew slowly, the great majority of them with birth defects, and me doing everything, from reasoning, to pleading with her, not to pair the parents anymore. Every year, I'd find her eggs in the incubator, until finally, exhasted, as female beardeds become from egg laying, the mother of the weaklings passed on.

And there in lies the other evil. Egg laying. I'd say 90+% of the female beardeds I've known have died in egg laying. They get old, they get thin and their bodies just can't push them out. Its inevitable. Those that don't die in egg laying, die of accidents, or being euthanized when disease strikes their aging bodies. Males die generally of kidney failure or obesity, tho they do get to live twice as long as the girls do.

I used to say I've been bitten by beardeds twice. I remember both times...one was a very skittish animal that a person saved from a classroom where the kids were caugh torturing it. It nailed me as I tried to examine it for health. It was scared out of its mind.

The second animal, was an animal that belonged to a customer, and he felt the need to retell you its pedigree every time they brought it into the store (which was often). Reminds me of the people who approach you with their dog and blurt out "shes a champion such and such, when you hadn't even noticed the animal yet.....Of course pedigrees in bearded dragons for the most part are simply pretty animals bred to pretty animals, selected for color or pattern mutations. Anyway, despite its pedigree, it was a rather mediore looking animal, and it nailed me as I held up a nail clipper. It gave no signals, it just bit me, let go and was fine. The top of my finger was not fine

but these two stories, while I say they are the only ones, really aren't. I get bitten by babies almost daily now...som'thing I couldn't have said 6 years ago. Baby beardeds seem to be becoming more and more aggressive as the years pass, I have also noticed an increase in flightly skittish animals. Beardeds so skittish, they are almost impossible to handle, and they take quite a bit of forced interactions to 'grow out of it".

I remember a specific group of leatherbacks imported from europe. I have never dealt with beardeds that were so aggressive at a juvenile age. Absolutely untrustworthy and "evil" as we called them. They weren't a hard sell tho, they were a rare morph, and no doubt every last one of them went on to reproduce.

I have seen birth defects increase, with a big peak around 2008, I see fewer today, but I think thats due to most of the novices no longer breeding, and have given away their adults.

Thats the other thing...where are all these dragons going? This year and last, people in mass gave up their pets. It was insane. It was like I missed the "everyone relinquish anything alive" memo. People poured in wanting to give up the animals they swore were family members...many people saying the reason was the animals babies could no longer fund the hobby...ironic since the majority of people who buy a bearded dragon or two are not thinking about breeding for money...yet, once they have, and the money flow stops, the animals are worthless to them

Ironically, the pet, the exotic pet, that makes people different, is slowly going the way of the poorly bred purebred dog.

I see many more bites in my future.