Meet the Skunks

The skunks I'm testing are Seymour, Sebastian, and Raspberry. All three skunks were born as pets and were descented (so they can't spray); now they live at the Organization for Bat Conservation, helping educate children and adults about wild animals. Seymour and Raspberry are both 3 years old (from the same litter!) and Sebastian is 4 years old. I'm going to give a short bio of each skunk and give my impressions about their personalities.

Seymour is the biggest and most motivated of the skunks. He is always ready to get to work and almost never refuses a food reward. He seems to have trouble resisting the urge to grab any object he can reach. Despite this, he tends to pick up tasks a little slower than the other skunks. On the series of vision tests we gave the skunks before testing their slat-pulling abilities, he always took more sessions to pass our criterion for learning.

 

Sebastian is the most careful skunk. He has a tendency to pause before making choices and will reach his paws slowly towards slats, painted lines, or target balls. He also sometimes gets tired of a certain type of food or becomes less motivated to participate (it seems as if when he gets several wrong in a row he sometimes has to take a walk around the pen before coming back for more).

 

Raspberry is the smallest skunk and she tends to be the fastest learner. On the vision tests, she needed the least amount of experience to pass criterion for learning, and she was the first to pass training on any of the slat-patterns. She's not as eager as Seymour, but she's also a little less careful than Sebastian.