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Scientists can now tell if a chicken is happy or sad based on its cluck sounds
Study reveals humans can identify the emotional state of a chicken just from their cluck sounds, but how will this impact farming and welfare?
Chicken farming is a multi-trillion-dollar industry and with over 34 billion chickens in the world, there is a much-needed emphasis on improving the welfare of farmed animals. Educating farmers on animal welfare is one thing, but it turns out that both new and existing chicken farmers can support their birds by listening out for specific cluck sounds.
Humans can tell if chickens are happy or sad with remarkable accuracy
Scientists from the University of Queensland have found that humans have remarkable accuracy in detecting when chickens are excited or displeased from their clucking, which could have implications for the entire farming industry.
The team wanted to find out if your average Joe could figure out the emotional context behind a chickens clucking, an ability that could significantly improve the welfare of farmed chickens around the world.
In this study, we used recordings of chickens vocalizing in all different scenarios from a previous experiment, explained co-author of the paper, Professor Henning.
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Two calls were produced in anticipation of a reward, which we called the food call and the fast cluck. Two other call types were produced in non-reward contexts, such as food being withheld, which we called the whine and gakel calls.
So, the team had recordings of happy chickens and frustrated chickens, but how good was the 194-person sample at identifying which clucks came from which birds?
We found 69 per cent of all participants could correctly tell if a chicken sounded excited or displeased, Professor Henning said.
This is a remarkable result and further strengthens evidence that humans have the ability to perceive the emotional context of vocalizations made by different species.
Older people were also less accurate in context identification compared to younger participants, with the researcher suggesting that this may be owing to reduced hearing ability of older people.
However, the team also found that the experience of raising chickens did not have a major impact on the rates of successful identification. The team noted that this may be because people working with chickens in intensive agriculture do not experience birds that are positively rewarded.
They explained that this research should provide confidence that people involved in chicken husbandry can identify the emotional state of the birds they look after, even if they dont have prior experience.
Whats next for this clutch of clever clogs? Professor Henning shared how their hope is that future research can find specific acoustic cues that predict how humans rate arousal in chicken calls could be identified.
In turn, engineers could one day create AI systems that monitor emotional vocalizations when owners arent around, maintaining positive husbandry standards throughout the day.
This would allow for the development of automated assessments of compromised or good welfare states within poultry management systems, he added.
Ultimately this could enhance the management of farmed chickens to improve their welfare, while helping conscientious consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions.
In a world where poultry farming is not only an extremely lucrative business but key to maintaining the global food supply, small improvements in animal husbandry can go a long way to helping welfare of our clucky friends worldwide.
