Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. – Anonymous

Perhaps Soham Mukherjee will change that.

The herpetologist has trained fish to identify shapes and colours. When he holds a shape or a colour card and places a replica on a side of a glass tank, the fish swim upto it to ‘kiss’ it.

In addition, Mukherjee has trained crocodiles to grunt in greeting, taught chickens to hug him, ducks to kiss him, frogs to eat from his hand, tortoises and birds crane their neck to indicate itchy areas that need a scratch, pigs to roll on the ground, iguanas to run up and down a wall and turkeys to hello him right back. The 31-year-old is India’s very own Dr Dolittle who can beckon all the winged and the legged he’s coached by name.

“When people see the pigs I’ve trained come, sit, lie down and fetch just as dogs do, they find a new respect for the animal,” says Mukherjee. “Adults feel that animals cannot learn, especially older animals. And not too long ago, crocodiles were thought to be stupid because of their small brain size. But it’s the density of the brain cells that matter. I’ve trained crocodiles older than 45 years and they’ve been very fast learners.”

Talking over the phone from his Ahmedabad residence, it seems as though chickens are also trying to talk into the receiver. He sheepishly admits there are seven of them at the Mukherjee residence, which he shares with wife Akanksha, their three-year-old son Vivaan, their four dogs, six cockatiels, 100 fish and three slider turtles. Their home occasionally becomes a creche for hatchlings and newborns of varying species, and a vacation spot for frogs and monitor lizards. It is no wonder than that Mukherjee’s Facebook and Instagram pages show he has more selfies with animals than humans.

He endearingly documents in his blog the deeds of the dangerous and the endangered — the giant forest scorpion, for instance, that gobbled all five termites his wife offered it as “a kid stuffing its mouth with chocolates”. There are also YouTube videos, such as the one with his star student Ally, an American alligator, ringing a cowbell with her snout, or with Rambo, a mugger crocodile, who “opens his mouth” in slow motion at Mukherjee’s command, causing a viewer’s jaw to simultaneously drop.

But Mukherjee is no Pied Piper, magician or circus trainer. He belongs to a school of trainers and behaviourists who (a) want to improve the management of captive animals in zoos, stables, shelters and even at homes and (b) to amuse the animal for its enrichment “because, hey, an animal in captivity can get bored out of its mind!” Among wildlife circles in India, he’s lauded for his enrichment and behavioural training programmes for crocodilians. As member of the task force for Snake-bite Management constituted by Gujarat’s department of health, he’s held awareness workshops in about 500 villages against opting for traditional modes to tackle snake bite.

He’s done a stint at Madras Crocodile Bank Trust (MCBT) and the Centre for Herpetology, Mamallapuram. Besides, he has worked with the Gerry Martin Project in Bangalore and trained personnel at Crocolandia in the Philippines, at Alligator and Crocodile Parks in the US and at reptilian zoos in Europe. Today, he works on multiple projects, including radio-tagging gharials in the Chambal district to study their life-patterns and consulting for a wildlife centre that his wife manages.

Wild beginnings

Watching ants march in a line had been Mukherjee’s favourite pastime as a child. He grew fascinated by animals when he first visited the Ahmedabad zoo at the age of three. It was the first of many such visits during which his parents or grandparents would hold him in their arms for three to four hours at a strecth while he stared at the caged animals. While friends watched TV or played video games in their free time, Mukherjee observed the wildlife at the backyard of his home that was in the middle of large open fields. He also hid from his family monitor lizards in his room. “I enjoyed interpreting animal behaviour. I guess it’s something I’m born with. With the will to learn more, I became better at understanding animal behaviour.”

Though his father loved having dogs, pigeons, cats and rabbits, and his mother had grown up with goats and chickens, they were flabbergasted by the lizards. He continued to mother them anyway, and even added baby snakes to the group. It was only when he volunteered at the Animal Health Foundation (AHF), an animal welfare organisation in Ahmedabad, that he learnt that it was illegal to possess most of animals he had.

While heading the wildlife rehab centre at AHF, he would regularly exchange notes with herpetologist Gerry Martin on captive care for reptiles. Martin then mentioned Mukherjee to ‘snakeman of India’ Romulus Whitaker, who invited him to his Madras Crocodile Bank Trust in 2008. An excited Mukherjee took the first train down south. It was here he met the crocodile bank’s then director, Ralf Sommerlad, a German conservationist, nature photographer and “crocodile whisperer”, who introduced him to crocodiles training. “I didn’t believe him till I saw the crocodiles responding to their names within days of teaching them.”

Old crocodiles, new tricks

Within a week of arriving, he was appointed as an assistant curator but Sommerlad, who he considers as his mentor, left shortly. Although the latter continued to mentor Mukherjee over emails, chats and Skype calls, Mukherjee had nothing to rely on barring a few training videos. So he devised his own methods. The first step was to make the reptile trust him because they’d view him as a threat.

Mukherjee’s first student at the crocodile bank was Ally, a 15-year-old American alligator. Ally quickly learnt commands given in English prompted by a cue stick. She can now respond to 26 commands including come out and go in the water, jump, run, stay, take to the corner, roll, climb (a ramp), open and close the mouth.

Soon enough Mukherjee noticed Pintoo (an Indian marsh crocodile) observing Ally’s training, and made him student number two. Mukherjee attempted the ‘model and rival’ method commonly used to train primates, dogs, cats and parrots but which had never been tried on crocodiles. Ally was the model. “If she took three turns to get a command right, Pintoo, when called and asked to do the same thing, would do it flawlessly in the first attempt.”

Other crocs enrolled soon after — Mik (a saltwater crocodile), Abu (Nile crocodile) and Thai and Komodo (Siamese crocodiles). By 2010, he had 60 ‘students’ across 11 crocodile species.

Every crocodile has a unique personality, says Mukherjee, adding that “the bold ones were the easiest to teach. The shy came with mental blocks”. He relied on positive reinforcement, rewarding a ‘correct’ action — the action he was trying to teach them — with a piece of meat and a “good boy/girl!” comment. “Ralf told me ‘if they are coming out of their safe hide for a tiny piece of meat that is not worth their energy (as per croc logic), that my friend is good enrichment.’

Their punctuality is what impressed Mukherjee the most. “The training session would start at 4pm daily. The crocodiles would all line up 10 minutes early in the correct order,” he recalls. Each crocodile was trained for 15 minutes as the others waited at a gate behind a fence. “Once, I took longer to teach a new task to Ally. Pintoo grew so restless...he dug a hole under the fence and came out of it at me! Animals are puzzle-solvers, they find a way out.”

Hello, teacher

Mukherjee also trained his boxer, Casper, to identify crocodiles by their scientific names and enclosures. “I had to check the enclosures at the crocodile bank every morning at 6. Casper would accompany me. I used to tell him: ‘Casper, take me to Tomistoma’ and he would run to the right enclosure! Once they (animals) start responding to training, they are anxious to learn new things.”

Mukherjee left the crocodile bank in 2010. “But Ally recognised me when I visited again after 39 months... She did her typical low grunt, which meant hello,” recalls Mukherjee. “When I walk into the territory of any animal, and if I happen to be talking to a human, the animals will come up to me and lie around without the anticipation of a reward.”

As with the crocodiles, all his training programmes are designed to fulfil a required need. For instance, he’s trained goats to walk with him, come to him and stop on command. “This makes it easier to take them for grazing on long walks and wide pastures,” he says. Birds of prey at the wildlife rehabilitation centre he used to work at, would fly from one person to another to sit on his hand at his whistle, word or finger click.

To “amuse” the animal, he teaches them added skills. For instance, the chicken who hugs him thinks of Mukherjee as her mother. “Chicks, when they feel a threat, go under their mother’s feathers. This one would sit on my lap and I used to hug her. I began associating the hug with finger clicks.” So everytime he clicks his fingers, the chick flies in for a hug.