Here I am, why don't you answer me? Sensitivity to social responsiveness in domestic chicks

Maria Loconsole; Lucia Regolin

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105863

Here I am, why don't you answer me? Sensitivity to social responsiveness in domestic chicks

iScience. 2022 Dec 23;26(1):105863. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105863. eCollection 2023 Jan 20.

Authors

Maria Loconsole^{1

2}, Lucia Regolin¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
² Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.

Abstract

Newborn domestic chicks shortly exposed to a conspecific learn to recognize and prefer it over unfamiliar individuals. We assessed whether lack of physical contact or social feedback during familiarization affects affiliative preference, hypothesizing a crucial role of social responsiveness. Four-day-old chicks were tested for their preference between a familiar and an unfamiliar chick. In Exp. 1, we replicated the well-known preference for the familiar individual, even when (Exp. 2) a transparent glass prevented haptic interaction during familiarization. No preference was scored in Exp. 3, using a one-way glass, i.e., the subject could never be seen by its cagemate. The development of preferences toward a familiar but socially unresponsive cagemate was assessed by testing chicks twice (Exp. 4). While behaving at chance on day 2, birds showed a preference for the unfamiliar individual on day 4 of life. Our results highlight the importance of social interaction already in the first stages of life, irrespective of familiarity.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Ethology; Zoology.