How Clever Are Chickens? What the Experiments Reveal

Roosters sometimes call 'food!' when there is no food at all. Decades of experiments on the world's most numerous domesticated animal reveal calls that name predators, chicks that sense number, hens that wait for a bigger prize, and mothers that respond to their chicks' distress. Chapters 0:00 Food Over Empty Ground 1:05 From Jungle to Farmyard 2:57 The Pecking Order 4:14 Words for Danger 5:04 Honest and Dishonest Roosters 6:05 Chicks That Count 7:26 Two Minds and a Waiting Game 8:29 A Mother's Response Sources pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 4 pages: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ doi.org, 3 pages: https://doi.org/ Jack El-Hai, The Chicken-hearted Origins of the…: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-... FAOSTAT, Crops and livestock products: Chickens…: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL Chart data: FAOSTAT, Crops and livestock products, Chickens… Chart data: Abeyesinghe, Nicol, Hartnell and Wathes 2005… Media credits CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "2022-08-04 MIRKE GALLIFORMES Gallus gal…" by NaIzletuSi ™ https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "2022-06-15 ŠMARJE GALLIFORMES Gallus ga…" by NaIzletuSi ™ https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "Free-Range Domestic Chickens Foraging i…" by Ms. Linda-Wong https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Chicken dust bathing" by Chickenenthusiast https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Pekin hen with seven chicks, March 2021…" by Calistemon https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Hen with chicks, Raisen district, MP, I…" by © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Pekin hen with seven chicks, March 2021…" by Calistemon https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Red Junglefowl by Tisha Mukherjee 08" by Tisha Mukherjee https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Red Junglefowl in Sundarbans National P…" by Tisha Mukherjee https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "A close-up view of a hen inside a barn…" by Shixart1985 https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Chickens foraging near farm equipment i…" by Shixart1985 https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Cockerel or rooster (10087278606)" by grassrootsgroundswell https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "Gallus gallus, Khao Yai Lam Ta Khong, T…" by dhfischer https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus)" by Luciano Massa https://inaturalist.org/observations/... "Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus)" by Julien Renoult http://inaturalist.org/observations/3... "Eurasian Goshawk (Astur gentilis)" by Вячеслав Юсупов https://inaturalist.org/observations/... "Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus)" by Donald Davesne https://inaturalist.org/observations/... "Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus)" by Daniel S. Katz https://inaturalist.org/observations/... "Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus)" by Kalvin Chan https://inaturalist.org/observations/... "Gallus gallus domesticus - Kanagawa 202…" by Nesnad https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus)" by Carman Chew https://inaturalist.org/observations/... CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "Gallus sonneratii (Bandipur)" by Yathin S Krishnappa https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Hen with chicks E2" by Elena Chochkova https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "1 day old chick hatchling 2" by Uberprutser https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... "Hen with chicks 1" by Shanmugamp7 https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "Hen dustbathing" by Dave Crosby https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... Public domain / CC0: 4 from Wikimedia Commons, 4 from iNaturalist, 3 from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 4 from Art Institute of Chicago. Map data: Natural Earth (public domain), naturalearthdata.com Images labelled "AI-generated illustration" are artistic reconstructions made with an AI image model from our own prompts. They are not photographs. Narration: synthetic voice (Azure AI Speech) reading our own researched script. Music: original, made with our own algorithmic composer. #birds #chickens