twocrowsranch, thankyou! I know they are just "dumb quail" kinda like "dumb chickens" but they do have the capacity to learn easily - mostly because they take everything at face value.
Good to hear that you have a system for your birds - our chickens do the same. They have learned that when the net comes out, everyone better haul a** back to the coop or they are going to go for a ride! Your birds have associated the sound of the click with being chased by the net, so now everytime they hear the click they make the next step in their mind and work to avoid what's comming next. It's a good system and it works - but it actually isn't clicker training!
Animal behaviourists recognize two different kinds of learning: operant learning and classical learning. Classical learning is like Pavlov's dogs (and like your trained bobwhites!) - when the dogs were fed, a bell rang, and they paired the ringing of the bell with food and began to physiologically react to the sound of a bell by salivating. The bell meant food! Just like when you're sitting on the bus and someone opens a bag of chips, we suddenly want chips (well, I do anyway) When your birds hear the clicker, they immediately go on alert and a second later run into the coop because they associate the sound with the unpleasantness of being chased by the net or going for a ride in it.
Clicker training is a type of operant learning. Operant learning involves some classical learning too, at least at first. With a dog or horse or any animal - let's use a quail, for example - the sound of the clicker has to be paired with something pleasant and desireable - something the bird is willing to work for. A dog might work for a treat, or a ball, or a belly rub, or simply a "good dog!" but a quail doesn't care about anything but food, so that's what I use. I also start them off hungry, so they havn't eaten in a few hours. With Brita i use mealworms now, because they are a very, very awesome food according to her and she'll work harder for them than for silly layer crumbles. (As any binge eater of cookies and chocolate will tell you, eating good food makes you feel good, because it releases endorphins). So I click and then immediate feed her a bite. And do it again and again. I always stop before she gets full so she doesn't lose interest. But after a few days of this, the sound of the click means FOOD IS COMING YAY! and physiologically, in the brain, endorphines like seratonin are released when the click is heard BEFORE THE FOOD EVEN COMES. This part is purely classical learning, the same way your bobwhites learned that the click meant NASTYNESS IS COMING! RUN HIDE!
So now what? When I hear the click, I get food, thinks the quail. But now I only click and feed at certain times - like when her foot is touching the green square on the floor. The first few times she doesn't know what she's doing, it's random. She accidently steps on it, she gets a click and treat. But when she doesn't step on it, nothing happens. She wonders why suddenly she isn't getting a steady stream of click treat, click treat, click treat. Somewhere along the way the quail (or, whatever you are training) makes a HUGE discovery - "it only clicks when my foot is on the green sqaure. Hmmm." and as an experiment, she PURPOSELY puts her foot on the green square in an effort to bring back the click. And it works. At this point, a lot of animals will visibly do a little a happy dance and get really excited when they discover that they actually have control over the click and can make it happen any time they want - just by stepping on a green square. It's funny because you can actually see this with Brita and her green square - she looks at it, looks at the clicker, looks back at it, and just deliberately puts her foot on it then looks to the clicker to see if she is right. And she is. And then she can't stop doing it. They call this Operant learning because the animal has become the operator. So now if I put a green sqaure in front of her, she steps on it. if I take that away and put a red ball in front of her, she pecks it. She knows the objects are different and that she has to do different things to them in order to get the click.From her perspective, it's like she is training me. "How can I teach this dumb human to give me food?" "See how well trained she is - all I have to do is peck this ball and she gives me food."
With dogs its a little more complex because they view us differently and actually have an emotional bond with humans, but with a quail - we're just food dispensers. If I give Brita enough food eventually she will stuff herself and lay down and not peck the ball anymore because the food is no longer desireable.
NOW, about bobwhites... I hatched one alone once and raised it by hand in the house and I swear it was as intelligent and sociable as a parrot. It ran free in the house and could not bear to be away from me. I think that somone could do some crazy stuff with a bobwhites quail, they are just so... alert, inquisitive. I would love to see what a bobwhite could do!
