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 […]
Tag: Chickens
Failed landings by chickens (pilot studies)
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 […]
A partial history of trained dancing chickens
This video tells part of the history of trained dancing chickens, with emphasis on the role played by psychologist B.F. Skinner (who is pictured below): Modern Farmer offers a more extensive history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
Ig Nobel winner (Chickens Prefer Beautiful Winners) on dog breeds
BiblioChile reports on a new paper by Ig Nobel Prize winner (“Chickens Prefer Beautiful People“) Stefano Ghirlanda. Here’s an auto-translation of the beginning of that report: How dogs movies have influenced the alteration dog breeds in the world “Chickens prefer the pretty people” headlined an amazing scientific study published in 2002. At work, led by […]
They trained chickens to play baseball, and then some
Psychologist B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning work inspired the work of Marian Breland Bailey. Bailey’s work inspired this study: “Marian Breland Bailey: The Mouse Who Reinforced,” John N. Marr, Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 59-79. Marr writes: Marian and her first husband, Keller Breland, had become the most experienced and accomplished […]
Confronting the question “Do Hens Have Friends?”
Do hens have friends? The question finally got a good, hard academic look-see, resulting in this study: “Do Hens Have Friends?” Siobhan M. Abeyesinghe [pictured here], Julian A. Drewe, Lucy Asher, Christopher M. Wathes, Lisa M. Collins, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol. 143, no. 1, January 15, 2013, pp. 61-66. The authors, at the Royal Veterinary […]
Chickens, Consciousness, and the LHC
Dr. Dainis Zeps, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Latvia, is one of the very few to have investigated “hierarchical multitime notion and of the cone of creation” with reference to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. His paper on the subject, ‘On to What Effect LHC Experiment […]
The ‘Animal Elimination Problem’
Are vegetarians being cruel to animals? In the sense that they might be contributing to the ‘Animal Elimination Problem’ (i.e. as a result of their refusal to eat them, are they denying as yet unborn bred-for-food animals the right to a life)? Such problems have been examined by top-of-his-class Professor Stephen H. Webb (Wabash College, […]
Detect & remove cadavers from amongst the live objects
As professor William J. Wepfer, of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology puts things in his ‘Message from the School Chair’ “Today’s mechanical engineers might search the ocean with an underwater observation manipulator; work on developing systems to program robots for manufacturing; or build a prototype of […]
Brooklyn welcomes Ig winner polymath
Brooklyn College announces: Polymath in Residence at Brooklyn College Do chickens prefer attractive people? The answer is yes, according to Stefano Ghirlanda, the new Carol L. Zicklin Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College. A researcher on the psychology faculty of the University of Bologna, Italy, Ghirlanda joined the college community in September, and […]