Even to a veteran poultry farmer, one chicken’s cluck would probably sound like another. Now researchers at Australia’s University of Queensland have found that humans can tell if chickens are excited or displeased just by the sound of their clucks – and that chickens are not as dumb as they are reputed to be.
Veterinary epidemiology Prof. Joerg Henning from the university’s School of Veterinary Science and his team investigated whether humans could correctly identify the context of calls or clucking sounds made by domestic chickens – the most commonly farmed animal species in the world.
“In this study, we used recordings of chickens vocalizing in all different scenarios from a previous experiment,” Henning said. “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.”
The researchers, who published their study in the journal Royal Society Open Science, played the audio files back to test whether humans could tell in which context the chicken sounds were made, and whether various demographics and levels of experience with chickens affected their correct identification. “We found 69% of all participants could correctly tell if a chicken sounded excited or displeased,” 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,” he said. “The ability to detect emotional information from vocalization could improve the welfare of farmed chickens. A substantial proportion of participants being able to successfully recognize calls produced in reward-related contexts is significant.
Researchers hope that AI can be trained to monitor chicken welfare
“It provides confidence that people involved in chicken husbandry can identify the emotional state of the birds they look after, even if they don’t have prior experience,” the veterinary epidemiologist said. “Our hope is that in future research, specific acoustic cues that predict how humans rate arousal in chicken calls could be identified, and these results could potentially be used in artificially intelligent-based detection systems to monitor vocalizations in chickens,” Henning said. “This would allow for the development of automated assessments of compromised or good welfare states within poultry management systems.”
Ultimately, he concluded, “this could enhance the management of farmed chickens to improve their welfare, while helping conscientious consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions.”