Sniffy the Virtual Rat

When I first opened the Sniffy program, I honestly thought it would be a waste of time. I was eager to dive right in to training my live rat that I didn't want to waste my time training a rat on my computer. Boy, I was wrong about that. Training sniffy really helped me have a visual of the training process of an animal. It helped me know what to look for in my live rat, and I actually really enjoyed seeing Sniffy progress through the shaping process.

Magazine training for Sniffy was very simple. It only took about 15 minutes to do before he had the association between the noise and the food.


Shaping Sniffy to press the bar took a lot longer than I thought it would. I started by reinforcing him every time he stood on his hind legs while facing the back wall. Eventually, I only reinforced that behavior when he was over the hopper. After a couple minutes of that, he started consistently pressing the bar. He would press it multiple times in a row, then he would rear up like he didn't completely know that he only has to press the bar. After reinforcing only the bar pressing, he got the hang of it. He got to where he would press the bar over 10 times in a row.


I then put Sniffy on a Variable Interval schedule to where he would only be reinforced once he pressed the bar after 5 seconds passed (VI5''). I could tell he didn't really like this very much. Toward the end, he would press the bar then walk around the cage before he pressed the bar again. He had a routine down, and he kept doing this for a while.


Sniffy did not like extinction at all. He was going crazy trying to press the bar and was getting agitated when nothing came out. After a while, he stopped pressing the bar as much. Eventually, he stopped the behavior altogether.