Periodicity of death feigning by domestic fowl in response to simulated predation

Studies of learned helplessness in honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica).

“…Thanatosis has been studied for over a century and appears in a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates. These animals include 8 amphibians (e.g., Gargaglioni et al 2001, Bertoluci et al 2007, birds (e.g., Sargeant & Eberhardt 1975;Rovee et al 1976), fish (e.g., Howe, 1991;Gibran, 2004), mammals (e.g., Francq, 1969;Kimble, 1997), reptiles (e.g., Greene, 1988;Santos et al, 2010;Burghardt & Greene, 1988;Harding, 1997), spiders (e.g., Cloudsley-Thompson, 1995), and a staggering array of insects: beetles (Chemsak & Linsley, 1970;Prohammer and Wade, 1981;Allen, 1990;Oliver, 1996;Acheampong & Mitchell, 1997;Miyatake, 2001a,b;Miyatake et al, 2004), cicada (Villet, 1999), crickets (Nishino & Sakai, 1996), lepidopterans (Tojo et al, 1985;Dudley, 1989;Larsen, 1991), mantids (Edmunds, 1972),…”

Selective habituation of defensive behavior: Evidence for predator-prey synchrony

“…The sustained mouthing by these predators while they are restraining, gripping, or transporting their captured prey is an adequate stimulus for death-feigning induction. Thus, at night there are few defensive alternatives to death feigning, there are few (if any) alternative activities with which extended death feigning would interfere, and the duration of death feigning, which is subject to selective breeding (Gallup, 1974b), is lengthiest at this time (Rovee et al, 1976). The extraordinary resistance to habituation of nocturnally induced death feigning combined with the rapid waning of diurnally induced death feigning, demonstrated in the present series of studies, makes adaptive "sense" and provides strong support for Aschoff's (1964) hypothesis of synchrony in predator-prey relations.…”

“…Because growing chicks exhibit progressively lengthier durations over this period (Rovee & Kleinman, 1974), either no change or a decrease in response durations could be taken as evidence of habituation. The question of selective habituation was addressed by testing chicks either during the day or at night, at times when the difference in the duration of response was greatest and the variability in duration was least (Rovee et al, 1976). The specificity of habituation was assessed by introducing a novel experimenter (simulating the predator) on the day after the last habituation trial.…”

“…Of 50 ducks seen to death-feign during an attack, 29 were subsequently located, and all were unharmed. In laboratory simulations of predation, death-feigning durations are typically 1-2 log units longer at night than in the day (Hennig & Dunlap, 1977;Rovee, Kaufman, Collier, & Kent, 1976;Ternes, 1977).…”

“…However, past studies of death-feigning habituation have yielded discrepant findings, ranging from no habituation (Prestrude & Crawford, 1970; Eyer, Note 1), or habituation only after prolonged training (Gilman, Marcuse, & Moore, 1950), to rapid habituation (Nash, 1978) or even response sensitization over repeated trials (Nash & Gallup, 1976). Because the preceding studies were conducted without regard to the test hour and, with few exceptions (Gilman et al, 1950;Ratner & Thompson, 1960), involved multiple trials in a single day, it is likely that the changing baseline of response durations, which increase from a trough 1-3 h after light onset to a peak 2-4 h after dark onset (Rovee et al, 1976), contributed to the discrepancies. Moreover, because the studies involving only a single daily trial were conducted exclusively during the daylight hours, the relative persistence of nocturnal death feigning is not known.…”