THE INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS OF YOUNG CHICKS[18]
The data to be presented in this article were obtained in the course of a series of experiments conducted in connection with the psychological laboratory of Harvard University during the year 1896-1897. About sixty chicks were used as subjects. In general their experiences were entirely under my control from birth. Where this was not true, the conditions of their life previous to the experiments were known, and were such as would have had no influence in determining the quality of their reactions in the particular experiments to which they were subjected. It is not worth while to recount the means taken so to regulate the chick’s environment that his experience along certain lines should be in its entirety known to the observer and that consequently his inherited abilities could be surely differentiated. The nature of the experiments will, in most cases, be such that little suspicion of the influence of education by experience will be possible. In the other cases I will mention the particular means then taken to prevent such influence.
Some of my first experiments were on color vision in chicks from 18 to 30 hours old, just old enough to move about readily and to be hungry. On backgrounds of white and black cardboard were pasted pieces of colored paper about 2 mm. square. On each background there were six of these pieces,—one each of yellow, red, orange, green, blue and black (on the white ground) or white (on the black). They were in a row about half an inch apart. The chicks had been in darkness for all but three or four hours of their life so far. During those few hours the incubator had been illuminated and the chicks had that much chance to learn color.
The eight chicks were put, one at a time, on the sheet of cardboard facing the colored spots. Count was kept of the number of times that they pecked at each spot and, of course, they were watched to see whether they would peck at all at random. In the experiments with the white background all the colors were reacted to (_i.e._ pecked at) except black (but the letters on a newspaper were pecked at by the same chicks the same day). One of the chicks pecked at all five, one at four, three at three, one at two and one at yellow only. These differences are due probably to accidental position or movements. Taking the sums of the reactions to each color-spot we get the following table:—
