A new press release from the US Navy arrives with the rather eye-catching headline: "The Navy's Sea Lions Love Video Games." And the contents certainly deliver, focusing on a sea lion nicknamed Spike who's apparently "the most avid gamer in a sea pen floating in the San Diego Bay." Spike likes fish, napping, and playing a game system designed by Navy scientists to train marine mammals.
The Navy is very proud of Spike because, although he was the last of three male sea lions to learn how to play these videogames, he was the first to complete the full training program: He learned to understand the concept of controlling a cursor on a screen, then was gradually put through a series of more challenging games, with plenty of fishy rewards along the way. This apparently marks the first recorded success "in testing cognition of California sea lions with an animal-controlled interface."
