These Animals Actually LIKE Getting Caught

Even when animal traps are humane, it seems pretty obvious that animals wouldn't want to get caught. But sometimes, there are oddballs that love getting trapped. Here's what we know about what can make some animals so darn trap happy.

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Sources:

[Blue-gpvn]

I was taught in my animal psychology class in undergrad that trap-happy animals may be encouraged to be in the trap due to being safer in the trap than outside, in addition to being reliably fed via the trap. This was only talking about baited traps and traps that kept the target species inside safe from predators that might get to it before the researchers, but I think it's worth noting.

[jack.soncalo]

I'm sorry, the delivery from 200 fish to actually 100 fish + Phillip is hilarious

[GamesFromSpace]

"We keep giving them food in this box, and they keep going into the box! Weird!"

[jennifersaar]

They get a food reward and just have to wait a little while to get free... Basically, they're pulling the equivalent of sitting through a talk about a timeshare to get tickets to Disneyworld.

[alexv]

"100 Fish and Philip" sounds like a great name for an indie band

[fernbedek]

I would guess there's a difference between 'trap happy' and 'trap prone'. Some animals probably learn to seek the traps out due to vague benefits. Others are just bad at falling for the trap again and again.

[taguato]

Sometimes when caughing birds for banding them, you get an pygmy owl or a hawk that is trapped when entangled for getting in the net to kill and eat another bird already entangled there, sometimes when liberated, these owls learn that being trapped is non-lethal and they attack again and again those easy tangled songbirds, "knowing" that they will later be desentangled from the net by someone.

[unknownunknown]

"Oh nooo, don't catch meeee 😉🥺"
- Fish probably

[commodex]

I'm starting to wonder if this is a viable method to quickly domesticate a species. Make a "trap", and see which ones willingly enter.

[Crembaw]

I’ve been told by some people in the field that, nobody wants to admit it, but it’s almost certain that some animals do things specifically to get a rise out of human observers.

[Zeed_]

Fish: Trap me harder daddy!
Marine biologist: What.
Fish: What?

[CrepuscularChaot]

It makes me wonder if perhaps it’s FREAKING TERRIFYING being a fish, and a break from fearing assault from all sides is worth the trauma of being handled at the end of it?

[therongjr]

It's been ~25 years so I don't remember the specifics, but in my undergraduate Mammalogy class we kept catching the same white-footed mouse (or perhaps deer mouse) in the our population surveys. We caught that same mouse five or six times!

[Master_Therion]

One fish that is definitely not trap-happy... Admiral Ackbar.

[siennahartle]

Ok the idea of a fish named Philip getting trapped repeatedly and completely screwing up scientific research is deeply hilarious, like imagine a scientist counting fish and they they stop and are all like “goddammit Phil we talked about this”

[Lurkily_Esh]

Simplest explanation seems the best. You reward them for certain behaviors, the behavior increases. You're giving them food and safety, and some of them see the reward instead of the trap.

[LFTRnow]

This reminds me of a similar experience. I was doing TNR, which is trap neuter release, on stray cats. A few of the cats tended to return to the trap even though they've already been neutered and re-released. Of course the moment you find them you re-release them again because they don't need to be trapped and neutered. I always wondered whether it was the smartest or the dumbest animals that were constantly getting retrapped. They either were dumb and forgot there was a trap, or they were very smart and realized that they just simply get released every single time and quickly so it's a free meal without too much inconvenience.

[zombie]

anyone that owns guppies understands the confusion these researchers felt

[emmielucas]

I have a couple of stories about trap happy individuals. One of my favorites was when I was going down a trap line when one of the individual’s tag numbers sounded familiar. I thought maybe I had just caught her the night before or something. I looked back at in my notebook to see when I last caught her. I processed her earlier that morning. She had gone maybe 10m before going into another trap, so we ended up catching the same individual twice in one night/morning

[rogerhorky]

The Texas State Aquarium has a petting tank in which are kept stingrays and dogfish sharks. the sides of the tank are not perpendicular to its bottom, but slope up at about 75 degrees. All of the sharks stayed in the middle of the pool, out of reach of visitors. some of the rays came close to the edges, some avoided it. I was petting one of the rays for a couple of minutes, then decided to move on. as i stood up, the ray I hd been petting hurled itself up the slope so it was about halfway out of the water, with a lot of splashing. It was obvious he or she wanted more contact which is pretty impressive for an animal with no facial expressions and a limited range of movements..