Mote Marine Aquarium's Efforts to Train and Evaluate Shark Intelligence

By John Francis

Sarasota, FL - Visitors gape and cheer as a shark approaches them from the other side of a glass wall. The shark nudges an underwater target and within seconds, clamps its teeth around a chunk of fish held from above on long-handled tongs.

Cool!

We’re not talking high-flying acrobatics, but Mote Marine Laboratory’s Aquarium staff is slowly achieving success in getting certain species of shark to learn to touch a target. Not for the oohs and ahhs of a curious crowd of tourists but for the sharks’ own benefit.

It’s a program that also takes a bite out of common misconceptions about the predatory fish.

“They’re not just big, dumb killing machines,” said Joe Gaspard, a marine biologist who oversees care, research and training of manatees and other species at Mote. “Sharks’ ability to learn is high and facile. We can actually see animals reacting to what we’re introducing. It changes their routine.”

Gaspard knows of at least one facility that has taught sharks to go through an obstacle course. Mote’s main motivation, though, is to learn while teaching — staff hopes that training the sharks that live in Mote Aquarium will make it easier to assess their health regularly.

Mote’s efforts to train the eight sharks living in the aquarium’s 135,000-gallon habitat began about 18 months ago. Michele Taylor, the Mote biologist who initiated the program, wanted to see if there was a better, less stressful way to corral sharks for individual health assessments than using a net to pull them out. Getting the sharks to acknowledge and respond to feeding stations is one step on the path to being able to steer them out of their routine swimming patterns and toward isolation areas where data on weight, length and health can be safely gathered.

“Sharks are very skittish,” Taylor said. “You can’t do too much at once or you might spook them.”

The staff began by merely introducing “targets” — large signs with different patterns — into the tank, so the sharks could grow accustomed to being around the signs. They also had to get used to eating off the tongs.

The dinner bell? A PVC pipe knocked on the side of the tank that alerts the sharks to mealtime.

Later, the blacknose, sandbar and nurse sharks living in the exhibit were each assigned a specific target shape and pattern — sort of like a name card at a fancy dinner table. Eventually, those targets will be moved around the tank, so the fish learn to follow them.

The two nurse sharks learned so quickly that each garnered their own individualized targets, said biologist and Mote husbandry manager Sarah Friend. One learning advantage they might have over other sharks is that nurse sharks don’t have to keep swimming in order to breathe, as most sharks do. They can remain motionless and pump water over their gills by opening and closing their jaws.

“The nurse shark is probably among the easier ones to train,” Friend said. “They moved along pretty quickly.”

The training program, which includes feeding sharks fish containing multi-vitamins, gives scientists the opportunity to learn more about the sharks’ eating habits, control their diet and enrich their lives. All the sharks in the habitat grew up in the wild, where life requires more activity.

“It gives them something to do; it engages them,” Taylor said.

Over the months of training, she has noticed some of the sharks exhibiting signs of personalities. “Maybe tendencies is really a better word,” Taylor said.

One of the sandbars is especially skittish, while another is curious. One younger shark shows flashes of “attitude.”

“She’ll try to chase a bigger shark, and then the big shark will chase her,” Taylor said. “And she likes to play with her food. It’s very funny.”

Trained Sharks: A Look Back
The sharks now living at Mote Aquarium aren’t the first to be trained. Dr. Eugenie Clark, Mote’s founding director, was the first to discover that sharks could learn.

In 1958-59, Dr. Clark and her assistants at the Lab (then known as the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory) decided to see if they could train two lemon sharks. After a few weeks of conditioning, the lemon sharks were both trained to press a target in order to receive food. Eventually, Dr. Clark trained the sharks to press a target and swim to another place in the shark pen to get food.

“Of course, this is an easy trick to teach a porpoise or a seal, mammals with intelligence on the level of a dog; but for the lowly shark — which some taxonomists consider so beneath the bony fishes in evolutionary development that they won’t even classify it as a fish — this was an accomplishment,” Clark wrote in her book The Lady and the Sharks.

Before beginning the current shark training program, biologist Michele Taylor read up on Clark’s research. “That’s how I learned how easily spooked the sharks can be,” Taylor said. “So we made sure to introduce the targets very slowly.”

When to Watch
Visitors can watch feedings in Mote Aquarium’s Shark Zone at 11 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Mote Aquarium is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 365 days a year, including all holidays. Mote Aquarium is located at 1600 Ken Thompson Parkway, Sarasota, Fla., 34236. Admission: $17 for Adults (over 12); $16 for Seniors (over 65); $12 for Youth (ages 4-12); Free for Children (under 4); Free for Mote Members. Annual Mote Memberships begin at $50. Join Mote at www.mote.org.

Photo Credit: Marc M. Ellis/H2Opictures.com