Role of motor and visual experience during development of bipedal locomotion in chicks

The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of motor and visual experience during the development of locomotion in chicks. We have previously demonstrated that when locomotor activity is restricted immediately posthatching, chicks walk with shorter stride lengths and attenuated head bobbing movements. Head bobbing is an optokinetic response in birds, driven by the movement of the visual world across the retina (i.e., optic flow). During locomotion, optic flow is generated by forward translation, and we have shown that the magnitude of head bobbing movements and stride lengths are moderately correlated in walking chicks. In the present study, we investigated this relationship more closely by examining whether imposed changes in stride length could affect head excursions during head bobbing. We manipulated stride length by hobbling chicks immediately after hatching and subsequently quantified kinematic parameters, including step timing and head excursions, during walking. Imposition of shorter stride lengths induced chicks to take more frequent steps, spend less time in contact with the ground, and shortened head excursions during head bobbing. Nevertheless, the developmental changes in head excursions were not fully accounted for by altered stride lengths, so in a separate experiment, we investigated whether the development of head bobbing relies on the normal experience of optic flow. We raised chicks under stroboscopic illumination to eliminate chicks' experience of optic flow but found that this did not significantly alter head bobbing. These results are discussed along with related findings in other species and the possible neural and biomechanical constraints underlying development of walking and head bobbing in birds.