Re: Do quails think that the first thing they see is their mother?

That's a difficult question to answer scientifically. All animals are born 
with instincts generated from many years of evolution. How does a bird know 
how to make a nest. How does an animal learn to swim? These are all 
behavior "pre-programmed" into the animal prior to being born and are 
exercised in its developmental years. 

For a quail to mistake you for a mother depends on your definition of a mother. 
If you'll feed the quail, provide it shelter, and play with it, then most likely it will 
assume you are a "safe haven" to it and will stick close to you, possibly even follow 
you around when it's old enough. It's also certainly reasonable that should 
it learn to fly (if you coax and give it the opportunity), most likely it 
would always return to your "safe haven." I think the most important 
question you'd have to ask is will you keep this bird for it's entire life 
because if you are raising it domestically, you are preventing it from 
exercising its "wild instincts." Therefore, if you decide to release it to 
the wild, it might not fare well because it doesn't know how to hunt (you fed 
it), it wouldn't be able to fly (it would be caged). That might be more 
important to consider. Hope this helps.