PREVIEW

Most Humans Can Innately Understand Chicken Emotions. According to a recent study, most humans have the innate ability to understand emotions expressed by chickens. 'Newsweek' reports that a team of researchers in Australia has found that seven out of ten humans can interpret whether chickens are happy or not just by hearing the sounds the animals make. The team's findings were published in the 'Royal Society of Open Science'. 194 participants listened to eight calls when chickens anticipated a reward and eight calls when they didn't. The participants were then asked whether they thought the chicken was expressing displeasure or excitement. The team found that 69% of participants were able to correctly determine the chicken's mood based on just the sound of their "cluck". "Our study strengthens evidence that humans perceive emotions across different taxa, and that specific acoustic cues may embody a homologous signaling system among vertebrates.", "Importantly, humans could identify reward-related calls, and this ability could enhance the management of farmed chickens to improve their welfare.", The findings provide confidence that farmers raising chickens can identify the emotional state of the birds even without previous experience. "Being able to decipher the emotional state in an alarm call helps receivers to determine the severity of the threat and is particularly advantageous in dangerous situations.", Via study published in 'Royal Society of Open Science'. "In future research, reward and non-reward related vocalizations could be considered reliable 'markers' of internal states, allowing for the development of automated assessments of compromised or good welfare states within poultry management systems.", Via study published in 'Royal Society of Open Science’. THIS VIDEO MUST NOT BE EDITED FOR LENGTH TO COMBINE WITH OTHER CONTENT