Tonic immobility as a reaction to predation: Artificial eyes as a fear stimulus for chickens

Effects of simulated predation on tonic immobility in Anolis carolinensis: The role of eye contact

“…This replicates similar findings in the chicken (Gallup, Cummings, & Nash, 1972;Gallup, Nash, & Ellison, 1971) and lends support to an across-species generality of these manipulations. Scaife (1976a, b) has shown that variables such as context, orientation, pairedness, and shape affect the distance that chickens will maintain in regard to eye-like stimuli.…”

“…The second experiment was designed to replicate and extend earlier findings from Gallup, Nash, and Ellison (1971) with chickens and from O'Brien and Dunlap (1975) with blue crabs-that detached glass eyes em prolong tonic immobility.…”

“…Gallup, Nash, and Ellison (1971) have shown that even detached glass eyes, suspended from wooden dowels, substantially prolong immobility durations in chickens. In addition, Gallup (I972) has shown that chickens immobilized in front of a dead conspecific with its eyes sewn open or in front of their own mirror image show significantly longer response durations than subjects immobilized in front of a dead conspecific with its eyes closed.…”

Inhibition of return for faces

“…Nevertheless, facial features were clearly discernible in the scrambled-face stimulus and may have been salient, especially given the mixed-blocks design in which the same features were sometimes arranged as intact faces. To the extent that face processing might be engendered by the mere presence of facial features (especially eyes; see Gallup, Nash, & Ellison, 1971), regardless of their configuration, the face and scrambled-face stimuli might not have been perceived and processed as differently as we had hoped. If this were true, the failure to find any difference in the magnitude of IOR for face and scrambledface cues in Experiment 1 might reflect the fact that both cues were processed as faces.…”

Circadian rhythms of tonic immobility in the rat: Evidence of an endogenous mechanism

“…1974; Gallup, Nash, Donegan, & McClure, 1971;Gallup, Rosen, & Brown, 1972), and a number of studies have demonstrated its involvement in simulated and actual predatory encounters (Gallup, 1973;Gallup, Nash, & Ellison, 1971;Sargeant & Eberhardt, 1975). In the context of a predatory theory of TI, one might except cyclic changes in the susceptibility of this behavior as a function of time of day, depending on such factors as when an animal is most active and consequently more subject to predation.…”