For the tern chick, anything that behaved sufficiently like its parent was "recognized" as its parent, even if it wasn't.
Tree-nesting species (lesser noddies, white terns and a few brown noddies) form the bulk of the seabird population, and most nest on the forested plateau.
Obviously, the tern chicks in the experiment were not recognizing their individual parents - they were being fooled into treating a loudspeaker as a parent tern.
These seeds were attached to feathers of terns and noddies and between the daily immersions, they were hung to dry in a shaded, wellventilated site.
Pateman argues from a feminist perspective that by defining citizenship in terns of participation in the market place democracy is compromised.
We are in no better position than the tern chicks, as both human and non-human animals, and we are at the mercy of our senses for reidentifying particulars.
Hurford concludes from this that tern chicks have no mental representation of their parents as individuals.
The tern chicks were responding to very finely-grained properties of the auditory signal, and apparently neglecting even the most obvious of visual properties discernible in the situation.
