Abstract
Naive chicks of Gallus domesticus displayed a visually elicited pecking response to various stimuli with characteristics of both food and water drops; pecking was directed at small objects contrasting with their backgrounds, especially shiny, high-contrast targets. Chicks' drinking response was not elicited on initially seeing pools of water, and usually appeared only after water had been taken inside the bill. The preferred characteristics of targets for pecking would lead chicks to dew and rain drops, and provide 1 opportunity for learning the visible characteristics of water. Other opportunities are also available, and inheritance of an ability to respond with drinking to the 1st sight of water is apparently unnecessary. Most workers who have observed naive young of Gallus domesticus have commented on the variety of small objects at which the chicks peck, and have noted that this response to visible features of their environment leads the chicks to discover food. Lloyd Morgan (1896), Katz (1937), and others have noted that the same chicks failed to drink from pools of water, even when standing in them; seemingly, thus, chicks lack a response to the visible properties of water which will lead them to drink. Although it does not often seem to be visually elicited, naive chicks do have a motor pattern which has been called a drinking response, and which can usually be observed shortly after a chick first gets water within its bill. The purpose of these experiments was to determine why no drinking response is shown by naive chicks to the sight of pools of water, and to show that none is necessary. If one behavioral response will accomplish two physiological objectives with sufficient efficiency, natural selection will not necessarily operate to encode a second behavioral response if the economics of genetic encoding are restrictive. The experiments attempted to find some of the visual clues to which a chick responds and to show that these can lead it both to food and to water. Our concern is only with the visual clues,
Highlights
Naive chicks of Gallus domesticus displayed a visually elicited pecking response to various stimuli with characteristics of both food and water drops; pecking was directed at small objects contrasting with their backgrounds, especially shiny, high-contrast targets
S was making a slow aiming extension of its head toward a toe or other target and its bill met the surface before the shift to a rapid pecking thrust had occurred; all three. These three reactions are not judged to have initiated as drinking responses
We found that neither pools nor drops of water initially elicited a drinking response, their Ss "almost always" reacted with drinking
Summary
There would seem to be several possible means by which a chick could first encounter water: (a) by performing a pecking or a drinking reaction to pools of water, either when first seen or at least through maturation of the behavior within the first few days, before the chick dies of desiccation; (6) by imitating the response of a hen or an experienced sibling (Baeumer, 1955; Lloyd Morgan, 1896); (c) by a pecking response directed at some object at the surface of, or in, a pool; or (d) by pecking not at a pool of water, but at dew drops or rain drops This last suggestion has been made previously by at least Wing (1935) and Katz (1937), the latter on the basis of the observation that chicks seemed to prefer pecking at small shiny objects to objects of any other description. Experiment 1 demonstrated that while pools of water appear to elicit no response from naive chicks, a variety of stimuli, including drops of water, readily elicit pecking It attempted to elucidate the apparently conflicting results of other workers which suggested that the drinking response was visually elicited. Careful observations were made of naive Ss standing in pools of water, with a mirror in front of them, and naive Ss with a field of drops or with both a field of drops and a pool
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