Uno grabbed the plastic ring with his dainty black fingers, staring at it with his bright, golden eyes. He did well with the challenging task, and was rewarded for his efforts with a Craisin.
The 4-year-old ring-tailed lemur is one of two at McKinney’s Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary, part of whose mission is to educate people to protect natural resources. Since 2008, students from the University of North Texas’ Department of Behavior Analysis have been working with animals at the Heard.
Their current project? Crate training Uno and his lemur buddy, Pops, to decrease stress on the exotic animals during transport and to make husbandry tasks easier for museum staff.
The volunteer initiative through the nonprofit student Organization for Reinforcement Contingencies with Animals, or ORCA, introduces institutions and the public to new discoveries and technology from the behavior analysis community. ORCA also provides students with real-life experiences in the field.
The lemurs have landed
The Heard got its first two lemurs on loan from an East Texas veterinarian for an exhibit on Madagascar, one of the most threatened and endangered habitats on the planet, as part of its Animals of the World exhibit. The ring-tailed lemur is listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. Over the last several decades, their numbers have declined by as much as 25 percent due to habitat loss.
They were not intended to be a permanent fixture at the Heard. But when those lemurs gave birth to Uno, the museum held a fundraiser to keep him.
“That was a very successful fundraiser,” said Michele Dudas, natural sciences curator at the Heard. Like the raccoons and other animals at the Heard, the lemurs have an enthusiastic fan club.
There’s no denying that lemurs are cute, with their playful attitudes, fluffy ears and long furry tails in black and white stripes. And while there are breeders of exotic animals who legally operate in Texas, Dudas said, “Just because you can buy it doesn’t mean you should have it.”
“Lemurs should never, ever be a pet you try to keep at your home,” she said. “They suffer so tremendously for that.”
Dudas said she often gets calls from people wanting to surrender unwanted pets. But they don’t have room for any more.
“We don’t just take people’s pets,” she said.
“You would not believe the calls we get — Can we take someone’s zebra? Can we take their kangaroo? Things like that, that people are keeping in their backyard.”
The older lemur, Pops, was born in captivity as a breeder animal in the exotic pet trade. He is at the Heard strictly as Uno’s companion. But initially, Pops tended to keep to himself.
That’s where ORCA came in. Its first lemur training initiative focused on reinforcing typical lemur behavior and overall movement within the lemurs’ enclosure.
“We set up games to interest [Pops] in moving around and to discover and express his natural behaviors,” said professor Jèsus Rosales-Ruiz, ORCA’s faculty advisor. “We basically taught him how to interact with his environment.”
Uno was the opposite. He was literally bouncing off the walls.
Initial training involved teaching him to be calm and “to follow some sort of protocol, so that when people entered into his enclosure, it wasn’t always ‘me, me, me!’” Rosales-Ruiz said.
On a recent Wednesday, three behavior analysis graduate students came to the Heard for their twice-weekly training session.
“Training super-excitable lemurs is not easy,” said Regan Garden, a first-year student. “First you have to feed them."
After Pops and Uno nibbled bowls of fresh lettuce and chopped pears and apples, the trainers moved into their enclosure with two plastic animal crates.
They began working with targets made of large rings, a cloth key chain and a carabiner outside of the crate.
When their hands and attention linger on the target for a few seconds, they are rewarded with a clicking noise, a Craisin and often a “good job, buddy!”
When they become more comfortable, the trainers have them find the target in the crate and then gradually work so that they are at ease when someone approaches to shut the door.
They’ll do four of five training rounds during each session, then exit the enclosure to talk about what went well and what adjustments should be made.
They work on having the lemur move into and out of the crate, and try to build up the duration of time the lemurs spend sitting calmly in their crates — behavior that will make everyone’s lives easier as they’re brought to their outdoors enclosure for a veterinary examination.
If those click training techniques sound like something you’ve used with your dog or cat, you’re right.
Emily Rulla, the Heard Committee chairwoman for ORCA, wants to be a dog trainer when she graduates this spring.
She came to UNT from Oregon because of the ORCA program.
Students in the program also study behavior analysis on humans. They say that while many think research starts with animals and is then applied to humans, some human behavior techniques can also be applied to animals.
A win-win partnership
The partnership between ORCA and the Heard benefits both parties.
“They educate us also,” Dudas said. “We have a couple people here who train animals really well, but ORCA is able to expedite the process. When they’re here, they can devote all their attention to whatever animal they’re working with.”
Heard staff often observe while the students work.
“We’re just observing so that when that behavior is shaped in, we can just pick it right up,” Dudas said.
Allen/Frisco/McKinney editor Eden Stiffman can be reached at 214-977-8486.
IF YOU GO
The Heard Museum, 1 Nature Place, McKinney
Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Admission: Adults $10, Seniors 60+ and children 3-12 $7, members and children 2 and younger get in free.