KP2’s mission was clear to me. He was different. Abandoned, handicapped, and in captivity, KP2 was not under the same governmental restrictions as his wild family. The troublemaker seal with a fondness for people was the one Hawaiian monk seal we could study in detail.
“We’re going to fill the missing pages of the NOAA Hawaiian Monk Seal Recovery Plan with your biological data!” I began pacing the deck, causing the wet seal to unwind from around my legs.
KP2 retreated into his pool. I watched the small seal submerge and then resurface wearing a dog toy ring on his muzzle. He proceeded to shove the rubber dog toy into the outflow of the water pipe. He pushed it in only to have the toy spring back and sink. Then he retrieved the ring, positioned it on his muzzle, and started the process over, repeating the game again and again.
I doubt there could have been a more unlikely candidate for saving an entire species than KP2.
PART III
Survival
13.
Instinct and Intelligence
We had a lot to do in a short amount of time if KP2 was going to tell us about the biology of Hawaiian monk seal growth and development. The young seal was quickly gaining weight and growing broader by the day now that he was eating. Each day that we delayed was another data point lost. The transition from pup to juvenile had already occurred. I first noticed that he was no longer a puppy when the top of his head went from round to flat. He could easily balance toys on his blocky skull, while retaining his disarming phocid smile. At twenty-one months he was quickly entering young adulthood, although age did nothing to diminish KP2’s playfulness.
I wanted to document how the young seal made the life transition from seal adolescent to adult. More than 80 percent of Hawaiian monk seals died at this stage in the wild. I suspected that part of the problem had to do with the extraordinary number of calories these young animals needed for body growth. Just like humans, young growing sea mammals typically have enormous appetites, so I devised a study to monitor KP2’s metabolism as he developed. All he had to do was rest quietly in the water while I measured the oxygen level in his exhalations each week.
To accomplish our goal, Traci and Beau created a crash course in animal training for KP2. Nearly overnight, the young seal had to learn two important concepts: how to sit still and how to be polite around people and expensive scientific instruments. Like any energetic two-year-old, the seal’s first response was “No!”
• • •
CONSIDERING HIS SUNBATHING HABITS, I thought that KP2 would be adept at sitting still. He seemed to excel at doing nothing but lounging in his sealarium. That is, until someone entered his enclosure. Immediately, KP2’s enthusiasm for human company overtook his monk seal reserve. No matter who arrived, he’d surf in a wave of watery excitement, fly onto the deck, cuddle up to shoes, crawl onto scientific instruments, and generally crowd the person’s escape. As charming as this was at 160 pounds, I feared what would happen when he reached his full 400-pound adult size. He was bound to flatten someone or all of my instruments in his exuberance.
This was where Traci, with her calming touch, excelled as an animal trainer. She had miraculously transformed Wick, Morgan, and Taylor, the frantic sea otters of Monterey Bay, into cool, confident research assistants. To curb the otters’ habit of nervous grooming and swimming in circles, she taught them to float with their hind flippers touching the side of the pool. By focusing their energy into constructive rather than destructive behaviors—a technique borrowed from teaching children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—she had their attention. Research tasks quickly followed thereafter. I trusted that she and Beau could do the same for the boisterous KP2.
Secretly, I was envious of the trainers’ position and the intimate relationship they were developing with the seal. Each day they worked on nurturing the animal’s trust by talking to him and providing daily body rubs. He would sit quietly as they medicated his eyes with a cooling salve. The seal responded to their attention with obvious enthusiasm.
Yet no matter how hard KP2 tried to win me over with the same buoyant greetings, I could not bring myself to pet him. Somehow allowing myself that privilege felt like a betrayal to our science.
I also recognized my own limitations when it came to animal training. I possessed the best and the worst qualities of a trainer. On the one hand, I could read an animal with ease, an essential skill for any trainer. On the other, I was a pushover who believed in and even encouraged the wildness of creatures. Animals knew it and took advantage. Their behavior made me laugh and was most amusing at those times when they got the better of humans, especially if it was me. Some of my best science came from such animal antics.
My only formal schooling in animal training was short-lived and occurred when Austin was a ten-week-old puppy. Under the rustle of coconut palms that fenced a Kaneohe baseball field, we attended our first puppy obedience class. Self-taught in the natural rhythm of animal behavior, I balked at the rigidness of manipulating animal minds through a choke chain.
“You must show your dog who is alpha!” a big-bosomed instructor in a muumuu and wide-brimmed flowered hat demanded. “Otherwise they will rule you.” To demonstrate, she tried to choke the spirit out of a border collie–Dalmatian mix to the high-pitched squeals of the dog and the horror of its nine-year-old owner.
“Acch! Whoever bred such a dog should be arrested!” the struggling instructor shouted, finally releasing the spotted dog with disgust.
I removed the chain from Austin’s tiny neck. Off leash he was a star pupil following my every step through a gauntlet of older, panting dogs. We trusted each other implicitly; yanking on his neck was not necessary. The dogs in the class instinctively knew what to do. I felt that this particular teacher did not.
With the choke chain on, Austin and I suffocated on both ends of the leash. He’d lie down and then roll over on his back with his stubby corgi legs pumping the air. Instead of correcting him with a jerk of the chain, I laughed into crying. The instructor yelled. The dog kicked. And I ended up rolling on the grass with my puppy. We were the bad kids of the class who eventually flunked out. From then on the dog and I relied on our instinctual bond to get us through life.
That bond took us on high adventures all across the island of Oahu. On weekends we hiked the trails of Sacred Falls, and up to the top of Tantalus Mountain overlooking Honolulu. We camped on the North Shore sands to watch surfers challenge the pounding winter waves of the infamous Pipeline. On the beaches of Lanikai, Austin demonstrated the importance of instinct versus training by herding giggling children on the beach like sheep.
There was only one problem with my loose training style. It could not overcome Austin’s irrational fear of water, a logistical challenge since we lived on an island.
With such short legs, Austin was a poor swimmer, making little forward progress in the water despite his best efforts. Recognizing his limitations only escalated his phobia into a paradoxical reaction whenever he encountered a pool of water. On kayaks he stared fixedly at the receding shoreline, and then jumped off in a frantic attempt to swim back to perceived safety. On walks, if we approached a pond, stream, or pool he would plunge in, desperately struggling to swim to the opposite shore when he could have easily walked around. Fear destroyed his ability to listen or think smartly around water. No amount of coaxing or swim lessons helped.
I clearly lacked the animal training skills that KP2 needed.
• • •
WHEN IT CAME TO KP2’S formal education, I turned to Traci and Beau to serve as “translators” between me and the seal. My role was to decide the science that would be conducted and the methods that would be used. The two trainers broke the complicated mission into a string of manageable, fun tasks for KP2. Instead of forcing the seal into our scientific studies, we requested his assistance in saving his species through elegant training techniques and a bucketfu
l of fish.
“There is still one issue with KP2,” Traci reminded me. “He refuses to eat when he is out of the water.”
Before we could begin any science, we had to solve this lingering problem. Like a dog rewarded with a bone for shaking paws, KP2 had to make the connection between the research tasks and fish rewards. Currently, the seal always ran away with the fish before the trainers could tell him, “Good boy.”
Although Traci had overcome KP2’s resistance to eating dead fish, the seal dined only underwater. Regardless of whether he was offered a fish on deck or in a pool, KP2 would take the morsel in his mouth, submerge, and then play. He pushed, nuzzled, and tossed the limp fish into the air until he was satisfied that it was sufficiently killed. Only then would he swallow. During these play bouts Beau and Traci were left on the deck tapping their feet with a fish bucket at their side waiting for the seal to come back for the next fish. Mealtimes were dragging into hours—a smart trick used by KP2 to prolong his time with his human friends but challenging to my scientific schedule.
For the moment, training the seal to do anything was impossible. He was like a dog that took a bone from your hand and then ran off. All science was stalled until the seal learned to eat on the water surface and on land, behaviors that obviously went against his wild marine mammal instincts.
Beau went back to basics and contacted as many people as he could find who had trained monk seals. His colleagues were somewhat less than encouraging, telling him that monk seals were not the easiest animals to work with. They called them “true seals,” which was interpreted to mean independent, difficult, and generally snotty.
More than one trainer told him, “The monk seals’ indifference is hardwired into their personalities. Good luck!”
Rather than becoming discouraged, Beau began a long, methodical study of KP2 to peel back the layers of the seal’s psyche. The trainer rose early in the morning before the sun had appeared on the horizon, before anyone else had arrived at the lab, even before the cockatoos, sea otters, and dolphins had opened their eyes. The lab was dark, silent, and peaceful, a rare reprieve from the usual daytime chaos.
Quietly Beau entered the sealarium and simply sat on the deck by the seal. He watched every move of the animal and noted all the things KP2 found stimulating or interesting. He listened intently to the underlying rhythm of the marine lab, experiencing what the young seal experienced. He did this without uttering a word that would break the moment. The dripping of water, the low hum of pump filters, the call of seagulls, and the whoosh of pelicans soaring above the incoming tide materialized and sharpened in his silent reverie.
Soon Beau realized that the seal’s diminished eyesight heightened the value of all his other sensory cues. Movements, sounds, touch, and smells painted an environmental picture for KP2 even if he couldn’t see details. Through his whiskers, nose, ears, and skin he was able to connect with his surroundings. These were the things that mattered to the seal.
One morning Beau found KP2 lying on the bottom of the pool and his heart skipped a beat. Then he noticed that the seal’s hind flippers were slowly sculling. KP2 had his head shoved onto a shelf that was formed by the corner of the pool gate and the wall. He seemed to be intensely working on something underwater, so the trainer sat back and watched.
KP2 had retrieved all of the toys the trainers had given him and was stacking them one by one on the gate shelf. Balls, deflated floats, and large dog chew toys were all piled in one place. KP2 busily stacked and restacked the items until they stayed put. His behavior was reminiscent of his Hawaii puppyhood when he used to pile coral rocks to catch small fish and crabs in his net enclosure in Kaneohe. But there were no fish to be found in the pool. It didn’t make sense.
At last KP2 came up to take a breath of air, spraying water on the trainer’s shorts as he loudly snorted to clear his nose. In the subdued light of dawn it was difficult for the seal to see Beau when he sat motionless. Instead, KP2 listened to the rise and fall of Beau’s breathing and then felt his way with his long whiskers, mapping the location of the water pipes and the pool edge, and finally finding the seated trainer.
Beau now understood the purpose of KP2’s toy stacking. The stack was a landmark. Just as visually impaired humans use the arrangement of the furniture in their homes as clues for navigation, the seal relied on the predictable placement of objects in his sealarium to move as freely as a sighted individual. By placing all his toys in a known location, the nearly blind seal could use his internal map and whiskers to always find them. The trainer thought, why not use the seal’s natural whisker-assisted mapping to help him find food to eat on land?
To halt the seal’s habit of flopping back into the water to eat each fish one by one, Beau decided to bring the water to the seal. During the next mealtime, the trainer called KP2 onto the deck with a quick “Come, Hoa.” The seal popped out of the water as usual looking for a new adventure. Beau held a target pole, a two-foot-long stick with a yellow plastic float stuck on the end of it. KP2 knew the drill. Touch the ball with his nose and get a fish. His next move was to grab the fish in his mouth and roll backward into the water to play.
This time was different. This time the trainer raised the fish above the seal’s head and let him feel it with his long whiskers. Next, in an unexpected move Beau threw KP2’s fish into a dishpan filled with salt water that he had positioned on the deck between him and the seal. KP2 stared at the trainer, then at the pan of water with the fish lying on the bottom, and then again at Beau.
“Good!” Beau said sharply. In an instant the seal went for it. KP2 dove into the pan, nuzzled the fish, and swallowed. Although his body was dry, his head was wet and that was good enough for eating.
In time and with a series of approximations, Beau soon had KP2 sitting on deck eating from his hand. The trick was all in the whiskers. Rather than hand the fish to the seal as one would do for a dog, Beau held the fish above KP2’s head. Only after the seal had explored the fish thoroughly with his whiskers would he open his mouth and allow the trainer to drop it down his waiting gullet.
• • •
KP2’S REPERTOIRE OF BEHAVIORS increased exponentially from that point forward. He learned to sit still and roll over for veterinary exams. Even more impressive, he quietly allowed teams of ophthalmologists to monitor the progression of his cataracts by studying his eyes. This required stringing together a series of trained behaviors, beginning with hauling out on deck without soaking people, lightly placing his chin on a small plastic stand, and opening his eyes wide despite the shining lights of a camera or retinoscope. These behaviors were especially useful for the trainers as we needed to medicate KP2’s injured eyes with drops every day. Remarkably, he never blinked. I wish I could say I was as good a patient during my eye exams.
“Watch this,” Beau instructed me cryptically one day. KP2 was on the other side of his pool playing his buoyancy game with a coconut the trainer had given him, the same way he had in Kaneohe.
“Come, Hoa!” Beau called to the seal. KP2 immediately began surfing across the pool in his usual mounting tidal wave. I fully expected my shoes to be covered in salt water when the wet seal bounced onto the deck and then banged into my legs. But this time the surfing seal stopped short. Before he reached the edge of the pool he put on the brakes and slowly floated toward me. The overenthusiastic surfing seal who had once almost drowned Ingrid Toth in a friendly bear hug near Kaunakakai Wharf was now the picture of politeness in the water. KP2 had finally learned to respect the personal space of humans.
“He even knows how to pick up his toys,” Beau said proudly. Following a loud “Retrieve” from Beau, KP2 swam through the pool collecting the coconut, balls, and floats. One by one he pushed each toy across the water with his nose and then deposited them into Beau’s waiting hands. With his bad eyesight, the seal relied on Beau’s verbal commands and his whiskers to accomplish the task.
The most critical task for our upcoming metabolic experiments seemed simple but would challenge the seal’s instinct in the water and his boundless sense of fun. He needed to float quietly. Furthermore, he had to hold his position for at least twenty minutes beneath a metabolic hood. During the test he would have to ignore the pulsing of a vacuum pumping air in and out of the hood at hundreds of liters per minute. He had to disregard Wiki, Junior, and Mary, who called incessantly, demanding to be the center of attention, as well as shut out the people and dolphins bustling around the lab. KP2 had to focus on what he was doing without making a sound, but he could not simply fall asleep. To make the task even more difficult, he needed to perform these behaviors every other day first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, with no fish reward until we’d completed all the measurements. These were the strict biological conditions that I needed in order to measure his metabolic rate. Deviating from any one of these conditions would make it impossible for me to interpret his data. Digestion, activity, growth, temperature, and the peculiarities of monk seal biology could affect KP2’s metabolic rate. My job was to decipher how each of these factored into the daily caloric demands of the young monk seal.
I knew that I was asking a lot of KP2. Other scientists might have just shoved the young seal into a water-filled metabolic box and waited for the animal to eventually calm down. I preferred voluntary participation in my science to encourage a more natural physiological response.
The Odyssey of KP2 Page 12