AWARENESS OF TIME AND SPACE 



that serves as a cue. By a temporal cue is meant any process that changes 

 progressively with the lapse of time. . . . Time is not a thing that, like an 

 apple, may be perceived. Stimuli and patterns of stimuli occupy physical 

 time; and we react to such stimuli by perceptions, judgements, comparisons, 

 estimates, etc." 



The discussion so far has considered the natural cause and effect of 

 timed activity. The relation between dawn-light and the rhythm of daily 

 behavior may be measured under artificial conditions. In the brooder house 

 young ducks are quiet all night, and activity does not begin until daybreak. 

 But if we create artificial dawn with electric lights turned on an hour ear- 

 lier, the birds respond at once. Likewise, the influence of the hunger stimuli 

 may be observed in the pens. The Mallard that has fed well at his morning 

 meal loafs quietly; but the bird that has been held from his breakfast until 

 noon runs to the trays to feed eagerly. 



Regarding what he calls a "sense of time," Pumphrey (1948:196) says 

 that it is possible "to adopt either of two radically different theoretical ap- 

 proaches. The sense of time has been regarded as a sense of interval, for 

 which the reference standard is the solar day. And alternatively, the refer- 

 ence standard has been thought to be inherent and associated in some way 

 with the rate of living of the animal organism." I do not think these to be 

 alternative or opposing theories. The rate of living is hinged to the rhythm 

 of the solar day and to the metabolic processes of lif e ; the relation between 

 these constitutes biological time. This relation is not entirely an inborn 

 heritage of the organism, since the timing of its activities may be altered 

 by changing the rhythm of light and dark. 



All who have watched the vernal return of waterfowl are aware that 

 activities not only follow a daily schedule, but show a regular response to 

 the time of year. The same species arrive at the same locality at about the 

 same time each spring (see Table 4 in Chapter 9). Nesting has a certain 

 regularity in its beginnings ; the first gatherings of molting drakes are seen 

 in about the same week each May; the start of the flightless season has a 

 remarkable regularity; and the first southward movements annually begin 

 at the same time. Just as the daily rhythm of the sun governs the timing of 

 local activity, so the annual solar cycle, with its effects on weather and on 

 the bird itself, influences the schedule of spring arrival (Rowan, 1931). An 

 amazing coincidence of seasonal activity is recorded by Sowls (1955:167), 

 who observed the mass fall migration of November 2, 1946, arriving to pass 

 over the Delta Marsh at 4:15 p.m. His cooperator, Mr. T. H. Schindler, of the 



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