Humans can tell chickens’ moods by their clucks, study finds
Sixty-nine per cent of participants could identify the chickens' mood.
A study has found that humans are able to interpret the mood of chickens by their clucks.
The discovery, made by researchers at the University of Queensland, suggests that humans can ascertain the emotional context of the vocalisations made by different animals.
As part of the investigation, scientists recorded the calls made by chickens in both reward and non-reward contexts.
Two calls were made by the chickens when anticipating a reward, known as the ‘food’ call and the ‘fast cluck’. They also recorded two other call types when food was being withheld, referred to as the ‘whine’ and ‘gakel’ calls.
These recordings were then played back to participants of varying demographics and experience levels, to assess to what extent they could identify the contexts of the chicken sounds. Participants heard eight positive calls and eight negative calls, indicating whether each sound showed pleasure or displeasure and high or low excitement using a visual scale.
The results revealed that 69 per cent of the participants were able to correctly identify the contexts of the chicken clucks, saying whether the chickens were excited or displeased.
Reward calls seemed to be the most recognisable, with 71 per cent of reward calls being correctly identified compared to 67 per cent of non-reward calls.
The researchers anticipate that this discovery could contribute to the creation of artificial intelligence based detection systems, to monitor chickens’ vocalisations.
This could lead to automated assessments of animal welfare states within poultry management systems, which may improve the welfare and management of farmed chickens.
Professor Joerg Henning, from the University of Queensland’s School of Veterinary Science, said: “A substantial proportion of participants being able to successfully recognise calls produced in reward-related contexts is significant.
“It provides confidence that people involved in chicken husbandry can identify the emotional state of the birds they look after, even if they don’t have prior experience.”
The full study can be found in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
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RCVS' Mind Matters Initiative (MMI) has launched round two of its veterinary mental health research grants.
