  If the representation of spatiotemporally continuous objects is part of our evolutionary endowment, we might expect to find such representation in the newborn of other species, and indeed we do. Newborn chicks, for example, display a striking ability to represent spatiotemporally continuous objects (see Spelke 1998 for review). In one study, newborn chicks spent their first day of life in a homogeneous environment containing only one inanimate object. On their second day, the object was moved fully out of view behind one of two screens. Though they had never before seen an object hidden behind another, they reliably searched behind the correct screen where the object was hidden. Indeed they even did so when they had to turn away from the object in order to reach it (Regolin et al. 1995; Regolin et al. 2000). Chicks, it seems, have object permanence from birth. Although this does not show that object permanence is innate in humans, it does show that in at least one animal, evolution has succeeded in building it in. So Nativists can claim an existence proof of an innately endowed representation of objects as permanent.