Chip Chick
Hear me out when I say that I love chickens. I know that might seem a bit weird, but I’m an animal lover, and I think chickens are hilarious. The way they interact with each other and with humans can be surprisingly hilarious and even loving.
That’s why when I saw this study, I thought it was fascinating.
A study released by the University of Queensland in Australia this January found that chickens can express their emotions through their clucks and noises.
The average person may believe a chicken’s clucking is just random and doesn’t mean anything, but this study is here to prove that it actually does.
The University of Queensland’s School of Veterinary Science wanted to see if people could distinguish the different kinds of clucking chickens made and what emotion they were expressing.
In some of the study’s experiments, staff from the School of Veterinary Science recorded chickens making clucking noises in various scenarios. Then, they played those recordings for people to see if they could identify the context of those clucks.
For instance, two of the recordings played the chickens clucking in anticipation of food or a reward. There was another recording of the chickens’ clucks when food and rewards were being withheld, which the researchers called the “whine calls.”
The researchers played these recordings for a wide demographic of people to see if they could distinguish the emotions behind the clucks.
Amazingly, 69% of participants could tell whether the chickens sounded happy or upset.
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