Young Domestic Chicks Research Articles

The effect of food deprivation and imprinting on the behavior of young domestic chicks

The effect of food deprivation on runway performance was studied in two experiments using young domestic chicks as Ss. Considering both experiments, about 80% of the deprived chicks emitted pecking-feeding responses and ran vigorously in a runway for food, while none of the ad lib controls did. This finding was taken as evidence of a well-developed food incentive system in chicks in their second week of ontogeny.

The effect of imprinting training on hyperstriatal EEG in young domestic chicks (Gallus domesticus).

AbstractDuration of low amplitude (< 50 μV) hyperstriatal EEG activity is both a treatment and stimulus‐specific indicator of imprinting training in domestic chicks. Trained birds exhibited sustained EEG arousal in the presence of the imprinted stimulus whereas both they and control birds evinced temporary desynchronization when presented with a strange stimulus. The EEG pattern observed in the chicks was virtually identical to that obtained in domestic turkeys tested under similar conditions.

Social feeding in domestic chicks: A test of the disinhibition hypothesis

The hypothesis tested was that social facilitation of feeding among young domestic chicks could be accounted for by the disinhibitory effects of a companion’s presence. The hypothesis predicted that pre-exposure to the test environment will decrease the apparent facilitative effect of the companion. Sixty chicks were tested either as singles or pairs 24 h following either no exposure, exposure as singles or exposure as pairs. Exposure increased feeding but independently of differences between singles and pairs, thus disconfirming the hypothesis.

IMPRINTING TO A STATIC FEATURE OF THE HOME ENVIRONMENT.

IN 1951 Ramsay1 reported observations which suggest that recognition of the home environment by precocial birds might be regarded as a form of imprinting. This view was also expressed by Thorpe2 and implies that imprinting can occur not only to a fluctuating stimulus but also to any salient feature of the natural environment. The occurrence of attachment to a stationary object has since been demonstrated, though not beyond controversy, by Hess3, Gray4, and Abercrombie and James5. Both Hess and Gray used as stimuli a black circle and a black triangle of comparable size. Young domestic chicks were exposed to one or the other of these figures for one day, having previously been reared in visual isolation; when later tested in a choice apparatus with the figures at opposite ends they showed a clear preference, in terms of approach behaviour, for the original over the new object. Abercrombie and James tested their chicks in a runway at each end of which was a continuous light, one of them being accompanied by a stationary polythene ball which served as a ‘lure’. They found that in this situation chicks eventually formed an attachment to the lure, although they required more trials for its formation than did others which had been trained with the lure accompanied by a flickering light.