Emotional behaviour and social facilitation of feeding in domestic chicks

Abstract

Three- and seven-day old chicks were given 10-minute tests for amount of feeding behaviour following 4–8 hours food deprivation in six experimental conditions representing degrees or kinds of social contact with companions in order to test whether social facilitation of feeding required physical contact or could be accounted for by reduction of emotional behaviour due to visual presence of a companion. The results confirmed the latter hypothesis. This finding was discussed in terms of earlier results which had led to the rejection of an emotion hypothesis. It was concluded that social facilitation of feeding could be accounted for by emotion reduction where the test period is brief and the test surroundings unfamiliar. With longer test periods which allow adaptation, however, a physical contact-behavioural interaction explanation appears to be more pertinent.