Chickens are great learners because they're easy to motivate with food and they rapidly offer many behaviors. My hen learned a lot because she had a big appetite.

Here she is pecking a circle. I had to hold her back because she was pecking so frequently that I couldn't keep up. Notice all the food on the table. She's a messy eater but she's so engrossed in the "game" that she doesn't notice all the free food she could have.

By the second day my hen had learned to ring a bell on cue.

Your mission--should you choose to accept it: Train two chickens to perform four tasks. You have five days.

Task 1 -- the bread pan pull -- the chicken must grasp a loop tied to a bread pan and with one continuous tug drag the pan two feet.
Task 2 -- the ping pong peck -- the chicken must peck a tethered ping pong ball one time hard enough to sent it flying in a circle up and over it's support post.
Task 3 -- the bowling pin strike out -- the chicken must sequentially knock down a blue bowling pin and a yellow bowling pin in a specified order.
Task 4 -- the vertical dot spot -- the chicken must peck a vertical one centimeter black dot on cue and only on cue three times in 15 seconds. The cue is a red laser dot.

Either bird can learn the tasks, but each must learn at least one task and one must perform three tasks in sequence. Time is of the essence.

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Task 3: bowling pin strike out

Task 4: vertical dot spot

I went through the picture in my head. Chicken number one climbs up the ladder, onto a one foot wide platform, makes a 180-degree turn and tightropes across a narrow bridge to a second platform where it pecks a tethered ping pong ball sending the ball in an arc around its post. The chicken then turns 180 degrees and negotiates a second ladder back down to ground level where it encounters a yellow bowling pin and a blue bowling pin in random arrangement. It knocks the yellow one down first and then the blue one.

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Interview with the Baileys
To contact the Baileys and for workshop information:
714 Arkridge Circle
Hot Springs, AR 71913
email: behavior@hsnp.com
web: www.hsnp.com/behavior

Articles and videos produced by the Baileys:

• Patient Like the Chipmunks a video documenting the history of Animal Behavior Enterprises.
• Field of Applied Animal Psychology American Psychologist, 1951.
• A View from Outside the Skinner Box American Psychologist, 1961.
• The Misbehavior of Organisms American Psychologist, 1961.