Abstract：
Young precocial birds benefit from staying close to both their mother and their siblings, while prioritising adults, which provide better care. Which features of the stimuli are used by young birds to prioritise approach and eventually attachment to adults over siblings is unknown. We started to address this question in newly hatched domestic chicks (Gallus gallus), focusing on their spontaneous preferences for visual features that systematically vary between adult and juvenile chickens, and that had previously been identified as attractive: size (larger in adults than in juveniles) and colour (darker and redder in adults than in juveniles). Overall, chicks at their first visual experience, that had never seen a conspecific beforehand, were most attracted to the red and large stimuli (two adult features) and spent more time in close proximity with red stimuli than with yellow stimuli. When tested with red large versus small objects (Exp. 1), chicks preferred the large shape. When tested with yellow large and small objects (Exp. 2), chicks did not show a preference. Chicks had a stronger preference for large red stimuli (vs. small yellow objects) than for small red stimuli (vs. a large yellow object) (Exp. 3). These results suggest that the combination of size and colour form the predisposition that helps chicks to spontaneously discriminate between adult and juvenile features from the first stages of life, in the absence of previous experience, exhibiting a preference to approach stimuli with features associated with the presence of adult conspecifics.
摘要：
年轻的早熟鸟类受益于与母亲和兄弟姐妹保持亲密关系，在优先考虑成年人的同时，提供更好的护理。幼鸟使用刺激的哪些特征来优先考虑方法，并最终对成年而不是兄弟姐妹的依恋尚不清楚。我们开始在新孵化的家养小鸡（Gallusgallus）中解决这个问题，专注于他们对成年鸡和幼鸡之间系统性变化的视觉特征的自发偏好，以前被认为是有吸引力的：尺寸（成年人比青少年更大）和颜色（成年人比青少年更暗，更红）。总的来说,小鸡在他们的第一次视觉体验，以前从未见过特定的，最吸引红色和大刺激（两个成人特征），并且与红色刺激相比，与黄色刺激相比，与红色刺激紧密接触的时间更多。当使用红色大对象与小对象进行测试时（实验。1),小鸡更喜欢大的形状。当使用黄色大物体和小物体进行测试时(实验。2),小鸡没有表现出偏好。小鸡对大的红色刺激有更强的偏好(与小黄色物体)比红色小刺激(vs.黄色大物体）（实验。3).这些结果表明，大小和颜色的结合形成了一种倾向，可以帮助雏鸡从生命的第一阶段自发区分成年和幼年的特征。在没有以前经验的情况下，表现出倾向于接近具有与成人物种存在相关特征的刺激。
