Social facilitation acts more on the appetitive than the consummatory phase of feeding behaviour in domestic fowl

Abstract

This experiment was designed to quantify the motivation to show socially facilitated behaviour, by equating the increase in feeding behaviour shown by a subject chicken, Gallus gallus domesticus, in response to the sight and sound of another bird feeding, with the feeding behaviour shown by the same subject chicken following food deprivation periods of either 15, 30, 60 or 120 min. Feeding behaviour was recorded both as the amount of food consumed and the number of food pecks in a 30-min trial period. As expected, the amount of food consumed and the number of food pecks following food deprivation increased linearly with length of deprivation and the birds ate more during the social facilitation test than during the control when no stimulus bird was present. When this increase in the amount of food consumed during social facilitation was plotted on a regression line of the amount of food consumed it was found to be equivalent to 27 min of food deprivation. When the number of food pecks due to social facilitation was plotted on the regression line of the number of food pecks it was found to be equivalent to 92 min of food deprivation. A reason for the difference between the two estimates of the motivation to feed in the social facilitation test may be derived from the nature of the relationship between the two variables; food consumed and number of food pecks. A bird cannot eat without pecking at the food, but it can peck at the food without eating it. It is proposed that a satiated bird directs its attention to the food in response to the social facilitation effect of the stimulus bird feeding but eats relatively little. Thus social facilitation seems to act more on the appetitive phase of feeding behaviour than on the consummatory phase. (C) 1996 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Published in

Animal Behaviour
1996, volume: 52, number: 1, pages: 11-15
Publisher: ACADEMIC PRESS LTD

SLU Authors

• Keeling, Linda

  • University of Guelph

UKÄ Subject classification

Animal and Dairy Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1996.0148

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/65446