The U.S. Navy Is Teaching Sea Lions To Play Video Games—And They Love It

A group of sea lions have been trained by the U.S. Navy to play video games. However, they won't be making the transition to esports any time soon—the games more closely resemble Snake than Call of Duty, and were designed as part of a cognitive enrichment exercise for the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program.

"I really care about these animals and the lives they lead," Kelley Winship, a scientist with the National Marine Mammal Foundation and principal investigator on this project, said in a statement. "I love all the cool stuff we can look at with this research, but at the end of the day, I want to see them happy and enjoying themselves." The U.S. Navy employs over 120 sea lions and dolphins as part of its Marine Mammal Program, which was set up in 1959 to act as a squad of aquatic sniffer "dogs." The animals are trained in detecting explosives and other such hazards underwater, as well as recovering missing Navy equipment from the ocean floor. Since the 1960s, the program has been based at Point Loma in San Diego. To ensure the aquatic animal army lives a happy and healthy life, enrichment activities—such as open ocean swims and playtime—play a central role in their care program. As part of this program, Winship and her team designed the Enclosure Video Enrichment (EVE) system—a sea lion-friendly video game system.

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So far, three California sea lions have been trained to use the system, controlling the cursor with their snout through a simple virtual maze. "When he crosses the finish line, we cheer and his trainer rewards him with herring," Maison Piedfort, from the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, said in a statement describing the work. "The joy in the eye contact between him and his trainer as they celebrate a job well done—Spike [the sea lion] with his side-to-side dance and victory yelps—is palpable and infectious. He turns back to the screen and positions himself to win the next game."

The sea lions have spent three years training to learn to play the games, and have shown improvements in weight maintenance and performance in voluntary health checks during this time, although we do not yet whether this is directly linked to the gaming. Sea lions are not the only animals on the Marine Mammal Program, and the squad's dolphins have not been left out. However, designing a gaming system for animals that cannot leave the water involves a few extra hurdles. "Gaming dolphins need a large screen visible from the water, and sunlight interferes with visibility of a projector set up on the pier, which means gaming sessions happen after sunset," Piedfort said. Moving forward, the team hopes to develop multiplayer games, possibly even games where different species can play against each other. "We built a game where we can compete against Spike—he can chase us around and we can move away," Winship said. "He hasn't seen it yet. He's going to be really excited."