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Are chickens intelligent?
Are chickens as intellectually capable as humans?
What do we know about chicken intelligence?
Are chickens smart animals?
Do chickens have cognitive skills?
May 1, 2017 · Few people think about the chicken as intelligent, however. In recent years, though, scientists have learned that this bird can be deceptive and cunning, that it possesses communication...
Sep 23, 2023 · With impressive problem-solving skills, a profound understanding of cause-and-effect relationships, a basic grasp of arithmetic and math, and the ability to navigate puzzles or mazes to access food, chickens are much more resourceful and communicative than most people realize.
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- Chickens can be manipulative. Chickens are socially complex animals with a “remarkably sophisticated system” for communicating with one another. Even more remarkably, sometimes chickens use their skills to deceive.
- Chickens show self-awareness. Self-awareness can be defined as knowledge or comprehension of one’s own identity. Others refer to it as a “sense of I” that mentally separates an individual from others.
- Chickens can dream. Similar to humans and other mammals, when chickens fall into a deep sleep, they experience rapid eye movement, or REM. During the REM stage, our eyes dart around in different directions, our brains temporarily paralyze our bodies’ muscles to keep us still, and we have dreams.
- Chickens display good memory. Chickens have very good memories, particularly with faces. Chickens can recognize up to 30 other individual chickens and imprint the image of their mother within three days of hatching.
The simple answer is that yes, chickens are smart. They’re intelligent in ways that most people would never know. Here is a good example of chickens learning with operant conditioning (feeding them when they choose a particular colored dot).
- Chickens Have A Lot To Say. Chickens are highly communicative: Using over 20 distinct vocalizations, they signal to one another “with remarkable precision about critical events in their world,” according to Dr. Chris Evans of Macquarie University.
- Chickens Have Self-Control. In a 2005 study, chickens were presented with a button that, when pressed, gave them food. If they waited only a couple of seconds before pushing the button, they received a small amount of food, but if they waited an additional 20 seconds, they got a much larger bounty.
- Chickens Can Perform Basic Arithmetic. Chickens have a strikingly sophisticated awareness of numbers and math: A 2017 study showed that they can add, subtract, compare data sets and count from left to right, while a 2009 study demonstrated that newborn chicks are able to follow and win simple shell games.
- Chickens Protect and Empathize With Each Other. Like many other species, chickens are extremely protective of their young. A 2011 study found that mother hens stop preening and increase their distress vocalizations when their chicks appear visibly upset; this, the researchers explained, proves that “adult female birds possess at least one of the essential underpinning attributes of empathy.”
Short Answer. Chickens are quite intelligent animals. They can recognize up to 100 different faces, remember complex problem-solving tasks, and are even capable of basic communication. However, chickens are not as smart as humans.
May 11, 2020 · Chickens experience emotions that help them to make decisions. We can recognize certain behaviors as being indicative of how they are feeling. Fear can elicit rapid avoidance and alarm, or alternatively the limpness observed when a chicken is picked up by the legs.
