Abstract
MUELLER1 presented results of an extensive experiment designed to examine the effects of prey oddity, prey conspicuousness and specific searching image on selection of mice by two species of hawks. He concluded that oddity was more important than conspicuousness in prey selection. Other investigators have, however, demonstrated the effect of conspicuousness on prey selection2–5 when equal (no odd prey) numbers of two prey types (mice) were used. In addition, I found a significant positive correlation between effectiveness of selection by owls and degree of conspicuousness of the conspicuous prey (laboratory mice) in large pens with natural vegetation5. The contrast between the results of Mueller1 and others2–5 led me to question Mueller's experimental design for simultaneously testing selection of both odd and conspicuous prey by hawks.
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