Bird-Brains: Celebrating Poultry Day
Chickens are often overlooked and misunderstood. The term “bird-brain” is often used as an insult amongst us humans! However, a chicken’s brain (like all bird brains), is highly complex with impressive cognitive abilities. They might be the most consumed terrestrial meat on the planet, with nearly 70 billion chickens processed for human consumption every year, but most people will never get the opportunity to get to know a chicken and spend time with them. Chickens have been shown to be emotional and intelligent, with some similar cognitive capacities to pigs, dogs and primates.
Chickens are emotional beings and science has shown us they are able to express depression after an injury and aspects of maternal empathy when their chicks become distressed. They can also do basic maths from a young age, performing addition and subtraction of coloured objects. Furthermore, they can demonstrate self-control and will choose to wait for longer periods in order to get the best rewards. Anyone who has spent time with chickens know they are chatty birds and science has documented over twenty different vocalisations they use to communicate. Even more impressive is that each of their vocals (e.g., calls, whistles, peeps, etc.) actually convey information, which references specific cues in their environment. For example, they have different alarm calls for different predators! Chickens can also deceive each other in order to gain the upper hand in social contexts - for example males will fake food calls in order to attract females, but females have also learnt to ignore males which food call too often!
It’s fair to say there is much more to chickens than the simplified “bird-brain” image. Students who have been given the opportunity to spend time with chickens and train them with positive clicker-training methods are reported to be surprised in how bright chickens can be. Knowing all that we do about the cognitive and emotional capabilities of chickens it might be time to re-think the term “bird-brain”!
If this has stimulated your interest to learn more about chickens, you can also take our MOOC in chicken behaviour and welfare here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/chickens
Blog Post by Dr Jessica Martin
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.