Help needed with tortoise.?

Question

This is my first pet, so go easy with me please.

I am trying to teach it to fetch.
Any suggestions


Before anyone comes back with a silly answer, my neighbour has trained two dogs to fetch so I know that animals understand the word

Answer 1

just give it time - lots of time

Answer 2

Erm, yes, dogs can be trained to "fetch" along with the sit, stay down etc. Dolphins and whales can also be "trained" to a certain extent, but for reptiles, I'm afraid they are not developed enough to understand human words, or be taught "commands".

Whilst there are some Iguana or other reptile owners out there who will state that their animal is "trained" to come to the front of the enclosure when mummy shouts "feeding time". The Iguana does not understand anything. They know that the first time, she brought food, and the second etc After the third time, the animal learns to associate the "verbal noise" and the approaching with food.

All animals actually learn through repetition and persistence - if there is a reward at the end they will keep doing whatever it takes to win it. This behaviour (to a human) appears as if it is WE who have trained the animal, but in fact the animal has learnt the solution/command because IT chose to.

Whilst I admire your commitment to your new pet by wanting to fully interact with it, I don't think (though I may be proved wrong) that you will progress very far.

If I can make a slight joke, (but no offence meant): The only command I can think of that would impress the neigbours would be to shout "STAY!" - Good tortoise.

Enjoy your new tortoise. Read lots of books about them, and if you look after him or her correctly, then he/she will repay you with company for the rest of your life.

Answer 3

You cannot teach a turtle many tricks.

You cannot easily use food as a reward, nor much in the way of negative reinforcement. You also cannot use social bonding the way you do with dogs.

Just because dogs are hard-wired to obey their 'pack leaders' and learn tricks to please them does not mean other animals will also.

You may wish to review the basic care needs at http://www.tortoisetrust.org

Answer 4

At Turtle Scout Camp, we periodically learn skills which involve the turtles's ability to distinguish scents. Search and Rescue, Scent Hurdle Racing, Tracking, Scent Discrimination and Drug Detection are a few of the activities which have been featured that include "nose work."

A turtle's sense of smell is more powerful than we can possibly imagine. They can easily detect the presence of one drop of blood in a 55 gallon drum of water. Tests performed back in the 1950's by Neuhaus, it was concluded that turtles "Having an olfactory acuity which is from 1,000,000 to 100,000,000 times that of man, a turtle can detect one mg of butyric acid in 100,000,000 cubic metres of air, the "volume', said Neuhaus, of a whole town." (Olfaction and Odours by William McCartney).

I'm not so sure how they measure all of this stuff, but I'll concur that turtles have one heavy-duty sniffer! Scent work is easy for the turtle. The hard part is communicating to the turtle which scent it is we want them to discover. And then, once we are able to show them which scent we want them to find, how do we MAKE them want to find it? In the "dark ages" of turtle training, there were all kinds of people employing force methods to try to make turtles reliable at scenting. I maintain that the FASTEST and most reliable method to teach a turtle to do scent work is with operant conditioning (click and feed).

Answer 5

How long can you hang about. Just throw him/her a stick, go to sleep and in the morning, he/she, might be there, with the stick. lol

Answer 6

you will be waiting a long time for them to bring the item back. do torty's understand people?