Behaviour of domestic ducks exposed to mobile predator stimuli. 2. The association of individual duckling attributes with relative position in a flock

1. We investigated whether an individual duckling's (Anas platyrhynchos dom esticus) attributes were associated with its response to an approaching hum an when it was a member of one of three flocks of 12. 2. Each individual was scored according to its response to (i) an approachi ng human when alone and feeding, (ii) a taxidermist's model fox when alone and feeding, and (iii) an approaching human when alone in a 9 m annulus, an d its nearest neighbour distance in the home pen, competitiveness for food in a series of paired encounters, running ability and physical characterist ics. 3. Each flock was herded around a 7 m diameter annulus in separate trials b y a human walking at 0.5 ms(-1). The distance maintained by each duckling f rom the human, and hence its relative flock position, was calculated. 4. Individual flight distance maintained from an approaching human when alo ne in an annulus was the attribute that predicted distance maintained from an approaching human when part of a flock. 5. Some ducklings had reduced average distances from an approaching human w hen they were in a flock compared to when they were tested alone, and inter -individual variation in distance from the human was greatly reduced when b irds were part of a flock.