Vending Chicken

There are many versions of the Vending Chicken exhibit. In some cases, the chicken would deliver a small toy to the patron, while in other cases the chicken would deliver a postcard. The Vending Chicken exhibit could be seen as any other small-toy vending machine, with one exception. The toys were dispensed by a live chicken! In other formats the chicken would dispense fortune-telling cards or small postcards. Why pay some boring old machine to give you a toy when you can have the toy delivered to you by a chicken for the same price and twice the fun?

In early versions, the chicken engaged in only one behavior. For the postcard-vending chicken, the chicken would simply peck at a disk (or pull a loop). This peck (or pull) would trigger a device that would deliver the post card.

In later versions, two behaviors were chained together. The scenario would go something like this: the customer would deposit a coin, which triggered a small light in the animal's cage. This served as a discriminative stimulus for the bird to pull a loop. The pull of the loop turned on a “Thank you” sign that the customer could see. The bird would then press a disk that would result in the delivery of the postcard. In the Capsule Vending Chicken, the chicken would first pull a loop that turned on a thank you sign and then peck at the clear-plastic capsule containing the toy. The capsule then fell into the hands of the amused customer.