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Platypus Surfing: In Search of the Perfect Wave

Published: 24 March 2021 Publication History

Abstract

For this project, we design a self-activated wave enrichment system for a solo male platypus, 'Sam', at Melbourne Zoo. We develop a sensor system that Sam can learn to activate by swimming near the device to trigger a wave sequence, providing both choice (to activate a wave pattern) and control (whether to activate) over his environment. We predict that the triggering will promote natural exploration and play behaviours in response to the wave patterns and reduce noted abnormal repetitive behaviours. The project involves multiple stakeholders with city and state zoos, Animal Welfare Specialists, keepers and operational systems teams, university researchers and multiple funding applications and ethical clearances. With the project 'still in process', we detail the initial testing which indicates the overall potential success of the interactive system for Sam and specify the next steps for implementation, observation, analysis and beyond.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)LemurLounge: Lemurs' Individual-Level, Group, and Cross-Species Use of an Interactive Audio Device in ZoosProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641888(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024

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cover image ACM Other conferences
ACI '20: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction
November 2020
163 pages
ISBN:9781450375740
DOI:10.1145/3446002
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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  • OU: The Open University

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 March 2021

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Author Tags

  1. Animal Computer Interaction
  2. Animal Enrichment
  3. Animal Welfare
  4. Animal centered computing
  5. Interactive
  6. Platypus
  7. Play

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  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

Funding Sources

  • Aspire Internal Grant, University Southern Queensland
  • John Cochrane through philanthropic donation to Zoos Victoria

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ACI'2020
ACI'2020: Seventh International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction
November 10 - 12, 2020
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)LemurLounge: Lemurs' Individual-Level, Group, and Cross-Species Use of an Interactive Audio Device in ZoosProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641888(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024

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