The Instinctive Reactions of Young Chicks 165 



One witnesses a similar gradual growth of the fear of man 

 (not as such probably, but merely as a large moving object). 

 For four or five days you can jump at the chick, grab at it 

 with your hands, etc., without disturbing it in the least. A 

 chick twenty days old, however, although he has never been 

 touched or approached by a man, and in some cases never 

 seen one except as the daily bringer of food, and has never 

 been in any way injured by any large moving object of any 

 sort, will run from you if you try to catch him or even get 

 very near him. There is, however, even then, nothing like 

 the utter fear described by Spalding. 



Up to thirty days there was no fear of a mocking bird into 

 whose cage the chicks were put, no fear of a stuffed hawk or a 

 stuffed owl (kept stationary). Chicks try to escape from 

 water (even though warmed to the temperature of their 

 bodies) from the very first. Up to forty days there appears 

 no marked waning of the instinct. They did not show any 

 emotional reaction to the flame produced by six candles 

 stuck closely together. From the start they react instinc- 

 tively to confinement, to loneliness, to bodily restraint, but 

 their feeling in these cases would better be called discomfort 

 than fear. From the loth or i2th to the 2oth day, and 

 probably later and very possibly earlier, one notices in 

 chicks a general avoidance of open places. Turn them out 

 in your study and they will not go out into the middle of the 

 room, but will cling to the edges, go under chairs, around 

 table legs and along the walls. One sees nothing of the sort 

 up through the fourth day. Some experiments with feed- 

 ing hive bees to the chicks are interesting in connection with 

 the following statement by Lloyd Morgan: "One of my 

 chicks, three or four days old, snapped up a hive bee and 

 ran off with it. Then he dropped it, shook his head much 

 and often, and wiped his bill repeatedly. I do not think 



