Young chicks quickly lose their spontaneous preference to aggregate with females

Abstract

It is not clear when and how animals start to discriminate between male and female conspecifics and how this distinction drives their social behaviour. A recent study on pheasants found that one-week-old chicks (Phasianus colchicus) preferentially aggregated with same-sex peers and this trend became more pronounced through development, suggesting that sexual segregation increases during ontogeny. However, it remains unclear whether this ability depends on experience or develops spontaneously. Using a similar experimental protocol, we investigated whether sex discrimination is present at birth in domestic chickens (Gallus gallus) by testing the aggregation preferences of young chicks with clutch mates. We measured the amount of time spent close to male and female conspecifics in visually inexperienced chicks. Soon after hatching, both males and females preferentially aggregated with females. To clarify whether the experience with conspecifics modifies the initial preference for females we used an imprinting procedure. We exposed chicks to conspecifics of the same sex, different sex or both sexes for three days and then tested their preferences to aggregate with males or females. No sex preference was observed after three days of imprinting exposure. The disappearance of the initial sex preference shows that, although chicks can discriminate between conspecifics of different sex, sex segregation does not influence aggregation in the first week of life. We suggest that the absence of sexual assortment in the first week of age can enhance the social cohesion of the flock.