Chicken

10 Facts About Chickens

There's a lot more to chickens than being simple egg and meat suppliers 

15.8.2023
  • Chickens love to play, run, skip and flap their wings. They also enjoy sunbathing.1
  • Hens teach sounds to their chicks while they are still in the egg.2
  • Chickens have a profound memory and are able to distinguish between more than 100 faces of their species. They can also recognise people.3
  • Chickens are able to distinguish colours. They also see ultraviolet light and iridescent hues. Their world looks more colourful than ours.4
  • Chickens demonstrate REM (Rapid Eye Movement) when sleeping. That means they are capable of dreaming, just like us human beings.5
  • Chickens can show empathy and hens can act as a ‘social buffer’ for their baby chicks.3,6
  • The cognitive skills of chickens are similarly high to those of a dog or cat.3
  • Chickens have pain receptors, which means that they are able to feel pain and suffering.7
  • They can taste salt but not perceive sweet tastes.8
  • Chickens understand that when an object is taken away and hidden, it still exists.3

 

Hen on green grass

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Source

1. Baxter M, Bailie CL, O’Connell NE. Play behaviour, fear responses and activity levels in commercial broiler chickens provided with preferred environmental enrichments. Animal. 2019;13(1):171–179. doi:10.1017/S1751731118001118 
2. Caughey M. How to Speak Chicken: Why Your Chickens Do What They Do & Say What They Say. Hachette UK; 2017.
 
3. Marino L. Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken. Animal Cognition. 2017;20(2). doi:10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4
 
4. Seifert M, Baden T, Osorio D. The retinal basis of vision in chicken. Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology. 2020;106:106–115. doi:10.1016/j.semcdb.2020.03.011
 
5. Rattenborg NC, van der Meij J, Beckers GJL, Lesku JA. Local Aspects of Avian Non-REM and REM Sleep. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 2019;13:567. doi:10.3389/fnins.2019.00567
 
6. Edgar JL, Lowe JC, Paul ES, Nicol CJ. Avian maternal response to chick distress. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2011;278(1721):3129–3134. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2701
 
7. Gentle MJ. Pain in Birds. Animal Welfare. 1992;1(4):235–247. doi:10.1017/S0962728600015189
 
8. Yoshida Y, Nishimura S, Tabata S, Kawabata F. Chicken taste receptors and perception: recent advances in our understanding of poultry nutrient-sensing systems. World’s Poultry Science Journal. 2022;78(1):5–20. doi:10.1080/00439339.2022.2007437
 

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