Date: November 17, 2016
Source: University of Oxford
Scientists from the University of
Oxford have shown that newly hatched ducklings that are shown a substitute
mother object with only one eye do not recognise it when they have only the
other eye available.
Ducklings and other fowl normally
learn to follow their mother within a few minutes of seeing her, through a
process called imprinting. This process can allow a duckling to learn to identify
any moving object presented to it during its 'sensitive' period -- typically
within the first week or so after hatching.
In this new study, published in
the journal Animal Behaviour, ducklings were initially presented with either a
red or a blue duck decoy, which moved in a circular path, while wearing an
eyepatch over one eye.
The ducklings 'imprinted' on this
maternal surrogate, learning with this first eye to follow the coloured decoy
they had been presented with. In subsequent choice tests over the next three
hours, each duckling was presented with both the red and blue decoys
simultaneously while wearing either no eyepatch, a patch over the same eye as
in training, or a patch over the other eye -- the one that had seen the decoy
during training.
The ducklings that made their
choice with both eyes, or with the same eye with which they had been trained,
accurately preferred to follow the original decoy. But the ducklings wearing a
patch over the original eye, so that only the naive eye was available during
testing, showed no reliable preference between the two decoys.
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