Operant conditioning in redwinged blackbirds.
Blackbirds hop for food on fixed-ratio schedules just like lab rats, so you can teach schedule concepts with local wildlife.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers worked with two red-winged blackbirds.
They taught the birds to hop on a perch for food.
The birds earned every hop at first, then had to hop many times for each piece of food.
What they found
The blackbirds kept hopping even when the work requirement grew large.
Their pattern of fast hops, short pause, then fast hops again looked just like rat or pigeon data.
How this fits with other research
Horner (1971) showed the same schedule control in bats.
Together the papers prove ratio schedules work across birds and mammals.
Palya (1985) went further, teaching pigeons to "talk" with keys.
That study builds on the blackbird work by showing birds can handle symbolic tasks too.
Why it matters
You can use simple ratio schedules with almost any species.
If a client loves birds, a pet parrot can demo reinforcement live.
The same hop-perch setup also works for kids who like animals.
Pick a creature the learner cares about and let the schedule do the teaching.
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Join Free →Build a small perch box and let a client’s pet bird earn millet on FR 5 to show schedule effects in real time.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
An operant conditioning technique for use with passerine birds is described. Two redwinged blackbirds were successfully conditioned to perch-hop for food reinforcement. Continuous reinforcement and fixed-ratio schedules involving substantial ratio requirements were used to maintain this response. The behavior of the two redwinged blackbirds was comparable to that of more conventional organisms working on similar schedules of reinforcement.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1970 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1970.14-241