“Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans“, according to the title of the research study by Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist of Stockholm University, honored by the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for Interdisciplinary Research. That study was published in the journal Human Nature (vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 383-9.) Twenty-three years later, a Reuters video news […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Chicken blushing — People — humans — blush. Chickens aren’t entirely inhuman in that they, too, show emotions on their facial skin. Delphine Soulet at the University of Tours, France, and colleagues have explored how skin redness […]
One picture is perhaps worth 1000 squawks. That picture is figure 3 (captioned “Schematic diagram showing an acid-base imbalance in poultry under heat stress”) in this study: “Impact of Heat Stress on Poultry Health and Performances, and Potential Mitigation Strategies,” Sanjeev Wasti, Nirvay Sah and Birendra Mishra, Animals, vol. 10, 2020, no. 1266. (Thanks to […]
Of all the highly-evolved skills that chickens can be said to have, flying’s not one of them. So although those concerned with animal-welfare will no-doubt welcome moves (afoot in some quarters) to provide more space for egg-laying hens, some have noted that : “This larger, more complex environment permits expression of behaviors not seen in […]