Quote Originally Posted by wilomn View Post
This makes about as much sense to me as this: if you blow up a balloon it will expand but if you don't it could but may not....
Really? I thought it was pretty clear. But I'll try to explain it further...

If you give an odor puff to a bee then give it sucrose it will extract its proboscis (the thing they use to eat). If you give it the same odor puff again without presenting the sucrose it will still extend its proboscis expecting to be fed again. Here classical conditioning has occurred after only one pairing of the unconditioned stimulus (the sucrose) with the conditioned stimulus (the odor puff). The animal has paired the odor puff with the food so that the odor puff alone is enough to produce the feeding response.

A forum member doubted that the snake could "learn aggression" after only one feeding in the tank. Knowing this about bees then I'd say yes, this is absolutely plausible. But do I know this for certain? Of course not...

And as for the intelligence thing...I'm pretty sure most animals have the capacity for some levels of associative learning (i.e. classical conditioning) so I definitely wouldn't count snakes out on this. Leeches, crayfish, praying mantises, bees, etc. have been classically trained so why not snakes?

Dennis