YOUNG CHICKENS LEARN TO LOCALIZE THE CENTER OF A SPATIAL ENVIRONMENT

Young chickens were trained to find food by ground-scratching in the c entre of a closed uniform arena and were then tested in arenas of simi lar areas but of different shapes. Chickens showed localized searching behaviour in the square-shaped arena, and maintained this behaviour w hen placed in a circular or triangular (both equilateral and isosceles ) arena. With a rectangular-shaped arena, obtained by doubling the ori ginal square-shaped one, chickens showed more dispersed searching alon g the major axis, but searching tended to be concentrated around the c entres of the composing squares and around the centre of the rectangle itself. When trained in a square- or triangle-shaped arena and then t ested in an arena of the same shape but a larger area, chickens displa yed searching behaviour at two different distances from the wall of th e arena, one corresponding to the correct distance (i.e. centre) in th e smaller (training) arena, the other to the actual centre of the test arena. On the other hand, in a circular arena, chickens searched main ly at a distance midway between the radius of the small (training) and of the large (testing) circular arena. These results suggest that, du ring training, chickens encoded information on both the absolute and t he relative distance of the food from the walls of the arena, the latt er information being more accurate when the arena displayed identifiab le features such as corners.