New Page: Research

I am going to start posting some information about my various research projects, both completed and ongoing, on my new research page. To start, I added a general description and a video for my research on operant conditioning with rattlesnakes. You can also see the video below.

We used an operant conditioning procedure to investigate the ability of western diamondback rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox) and timber rattlesnakes (C. horridus) to learn to thermoregulate through an arbitrary behavior, a lever-press. Our rattlsnakes appear to be capable of learning through operant conditioning with reduction of temperature in a hot environment functioning as a reinforcer.