How chaotic are strange non-chaotic attractors?

We show that the classic examples of quasiperiodically forced maps with strange non-chaotic attractors described by Grebogi et al and Herman in the mid-1980s have some chaotic properties. More precisely, we show that these systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, both on the whole phase space and restricted to the attractor. The results also remain valid in more general classes of quasiperiodically forced systems. Further, we include an elementary proof of a classic result by Glasner and Weiss on sensitive dependence, and we clarify the structure of the attractor in an example with two-dimensional fibres also introduced by Grebogi et al. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd and London Mathematical Society.