Treating Japanese quail with vitamin C does not facilitate their capture by the experimenter

1. Vitamin C supplementation reduces fear of novel situations and of people . The present study examined its effects on the ease of capture of male Jap anese quail by the experimenter. 2. At 20 d of age, quail received either vitamin C (ascorbyl-2-polyphosphat e, APP, 1 g L-ascorbic acid/l) solution or untreated drinking water (UDW) f or 24 h before they were mixed in 2 groups of 40 (20 APP + 20 UDW). All the birds in 1 group were caught individually by an unsighted experimenter whe reas a sighted catcher captured the others. The bird's identity was noted e ach time. This capture/recapture procedure was repeated 6 times for each gr oup (12 capture trials per bird) and an overall capture rank across all 12 trials was assigned to each bird. 3. Regardless of whether the catcher was sighted or unsighted, the mean tan ks of neither APP nor UDW quail differed significantly from the value expec ted by chance. Neither were there any linear trends in the effects of repea ted testing. Thus, prior treatment with vitamin C neither facilitated nor h indered capture. 4. Body weights were similar in both treatment groups and there were no sig nificant intra-individual correlations between body weight and capture rank . 5. Highly significant tendencies were found for individual birds to be caug ht at similar stages of each capture trial regardless of treatment or test situation. This finding sounds a cautionary note for all studies involving putatively random sampling of a population.