Visual Experience and the Development of Depth Perception

In 1873 Douglas Spalding (53) observed that chicks which had been prevented from seeing from the time of hatching until they were three days old, nevertheless were willing to jump down from a raised platform and run directly to their mother within a few minutes of their blindfolds being removed. Similarly, Thorndike (58) reported that four day old chicks, ‘without experience of heights’, became progressively less willing to jump down from a surface whose height was increased. These early observations, and a variety of others on different species (see 66 for a historical review), demonstrated that animals are able to recognise differences in distance from a very young age. Given how important it is for an animal to know where things are as it moves around in space, such a result is not surprising. It is also unsurprising that an animal is able to take advantage of the many different sources of depth information which are available.

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