Teach Bees to Golf? Beehold! The Power of the BackChain

k9disc (49)in #psychology • 7 years ago (edited)

Teaching Honey Bees to Play Golf

Backchaining is a learning technique that starts at the finish of the behavior and works back. Tons of value is put on the finish of the behavior, making the finish of the behavior VERY likely to happen and a desired state. You can't stop the bee from putting that ball in the hole.

Back Chaining Is Like Gravity

I've long thought of backchaining like gravity. Backchained behaviors are like a black hole. Everything leads to that finish of the behavior. Behavior chains are descending spirals or straight drops into the finish of the behavior. Just add value to the finish, set up the situation, and let go; the behavior happens. It's like magic.

The Bee gets taught to like the ball in the hole by having the ball put in the hole by the administrator. This is the finish of the behavior; bee did nothing. Pretty soon the bee wants the ball to be in the hole because it means food. Bee pushes it slightly into the hole. Game on! Pretty soon you've got offense beating defense and strategy.

Come at me Bro.

Front Chaining Defies Gravity

Front Chaining is like a staircase. Each piece of behavior is built upon the last. To front chain this skill one would have to teach the bee to acknowledge the ball, approach the ball, touch the ball, nudge the ball.

Of course the bee would have to know how to target something or target the hole. Then you'd have to teach the bee to target the hole with the ball... It's not going to happen.

Each behavioral link of a front chain has to be strong for it to work. Otherwise you are working on a rickety staircase.

The Elegant Back Chain

The handler pushing the ball into the hole at the beginning was the set up of the backchain. Let that ball be pushed there and have the ball being in that spot be the predictor of cookies. Pretty soon, as I said above, the bee wants it in there. So it pushes.

I did this with my first dog, Kimo, an amazing disc dog, a pretty guy too. He had food aggression problems and I failed to solve them. So he lived out of a treatbag, working for his food, cookies fed from the hand and to the ground for 2 or 3 years. I got pretty good at operant conditioning, and Kimo had some pretty stellar skills.

I taught him to put his toys away with this technique. Take him over to the basket, drop a toy in, pay dog. Do that with several toys and wait. The dog will get a toy. Interrupt or prompt a drop, marking and paying, and the toy will fall into the basket. Repeat. It's a done deal.

I then transferred this to other things like garbage, shoes and dishes. Nothing like a border collie wanting to tidy up...

My second dog, Leilani learned this skill through mimicry, as the new bee did in this video.

Nature Is Intelligent

To me this video speaks to how common the behavioral toolset is across the plant and animal kingdom. I mean, this is just bonkers that Bees can learn to do this, right? And to do it the same way as dogs, cats, birds, and people is even more bonkers.

Makes me wonder if things could go the other way. Maybe we're capable of some of that collective intelligence shit that bees have. Man, that'd be amazing to discover something like that; we could really use something like that right about now.

I hope we start to realize and accept the intelligence of nature. It certainly is screaming things at us right now and we don't seem to understand what she is trying to tell us and seem to prefer not to think she thinks or speaks at all.