Have you ever tried to communicate with a chicken? 7 out of 10 people can understand them.
The idea may seem bewildering: can we understand chickens just by the sound they make? This is a human power that was difficult to imagine. And yet it might just be completely natural. A study published on January 3 in the British scientific journal Royal Society Open Science details the conclusions of a team of researchers who looked into the subject.
Their observation? Humans are capable of decoding the emotional languages ??of animals and especially chickens. In mammals, reptiles, birds or amphibians, sounds are produced by air passing through the animal’s larynx. Depending on one’s emotional state, these sounds differ. Which allows them to communicate and gives clues about their emotions.
For their study, the researchers relied on 194 people, who were played recordings of chickens. The goal ? Find out if it was possible to detect in these recordings the emotional state of the feathered animal in different contexts. Eight recordings had been made with a reward for the chicken (mealworms, food or dust bath substrate) and another eight without reward. While listening to these recordings, respondents were asked to indicate “whether the chicken was experiencing pleasure/displeasure and high/low arousal, using scales,” the study explains.
According to the findings of this British work, 69% of individuals surveyed were able to identify whether chicken cackles were made in “rewarded contexts” or not. In other words, almost 7 out of 10 people found the recordings where the chickens had a reward and vice versa, the ones without a reward. Even better results (71% of those surveyed) were obtained during recordings linked to rewards, the study highlights.
This ability to recognize the emotion of a hen or chicken has nothing to do with experience or knowledge of this type of animal. It may be an innate ability in human beings to interpret animal sounds. So how did the people interviewed in the study do it? They would actually have been based on the length of each gallinaceae’s vocalizations, the researchers explain: “In our study, longer calls were perceived as representing more negative emotions than shorter calls.”
If the scientists recognize the limited number of recordings submitted to the ears of the respondents, their conclusions could make it possible to better analyze the emotions of chickens, particularly in farms, and therefore to take a big step for their well-being.
