Visual Field Analysis

Chick 1) One newly hatched chick was reared in a cage with an artificial imprinting object (a red cylinder). One of the cage walls had a round opening, and the animal could pass its head trough it at will, to inspect the outer environment. Furthermore, the animal was familiarised twice a day with the testing apparatus. The testing apparatus was similar to the rearing cage, and one of its walls contained a round opening, through which the animal could observe an additional compartment. This compartment was empty during the familiarisation phase but contained the artificial imprinting object during the test (figure x). On day four post-hatching, the animal underwent testing. At this stage, the animal had to stand in a fixed position and pass its head through the round opening to look at the imprinting object located 20 cm away.

The behaviour of the chick during the test phase was recorded with an overhead camera for 30 seconds using a GoPro Hero 5 located overhead (input 1 in our application). The frame rate was set at 30 fps and the resolution at 1290 by 720 pixels.

Chick 2) In this this example, we have tested one subject in similar conditions to a study performed by Rosa-Salva and collaborators in 2016. The aim of the study was to assess whether naïve chicks had a naïve preference for a self-propelle object in comparison to an object motion linearily. Just after hatching, a chick was placed in the arena (size of the arena) for a duration of 6 minutes. A stimulus was located on each side of the arena. One stimulus was expected to be more attractive than the other and will be referred as ‘target’ stimulus from now on. In this example, we were interested in knowing the time spent in three different areas. The time spent close to the target stimulus (left zone of 15x15 cm), in the centre of the arena (15 x 15cm zone in the middle of the arena) and close to the non-target stimulus (right zone of 15x15 cm). The behaviours of the chick was recorded (input 1) using the same camera than in the previous example (GoPro Hero 5, 30 fps, 1290 by 720 pixels).