Can Wild Hummingbirds Be Replicated In An Animal's Natural Environment?

In attempting to determine whether wild hummingbirds are able to learn the refill schedules of flowers based on facilitated colour cues, Samuels, Hurly & Healy (2014) found that hummingbirds in the cued conditions were better and faster at discriminating between the refill intervals. They performed this study since there are not many studies which look at interval timing outside a controlled laboratory environment, as well as not many which remove other cues that may facilitate learning in the animals. The authors also wanted to look at which cues animals might use in their natural environments. Specifically, they tested whether colour facilitation would allow discrimination to occur more quickly in the first phase and in the second phase, looked at the implications of removing available relative and absolute spatial cues.
The birds were trained in a cued or non-cued condition involving two groups of cardboard circles where half of them were on a 10-min interval, and the other half on a 20-min interval. They were all one colour or two colours based on the interval, acting as flowers, and held a sucrose solution. As previously stated, hummingbirds in the cued condition learned to revisit the 10-min interval stimuli sooner than the 20-min interval. There was no …show more content…
Can laboratory findings be replicated in an animal’s natural environment? This question challenges the authenticity of animal studies in laboratory settings. Secondly, the findings are important as they can help look at how animals in the wild develop unique behaviours that help them survive or optimize their responses to get the maximum amount of reward. By discovering these mechanisms, it is possible to create programs that may help repopulate species that are diminishing or having trouble foraging, or relocate species that may have had their habitats affected by