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Chickens Prefer Attractive People
- pkaye 9y agoThat video of the rooster pecking and eating the cobra to protect its flock is amazing.
- skilled 9y agoYeah, it's quite something. I've been fortunate enough to live with a Balinese (Indonesia) family in their family compound, and have learned quite a bit about the ins and outs of chicken/rooster behavior. One of the things that caught my attention is the endurance that roosters show against one another. Not only do their protect their families, but also their pride. On one occasion, one of my friends smaller roosters (not sure of the breed) would go against a rooster three times the size. And he won! The other rooster (bigger one) was caged at that point. It was amusing to me to watch the smaller rooster climb on top of the cage and just sit there. The only other time you'll see that happening is when a smaller chicken is seeking protection from another family of chickens. Fascinating animals. I used to grow up with chickens all around my neighborhood home but never paid enough attention to see their behavior reflect instinct and some form of empathy.
- all_these_years 9y agoThere is another conclusion: chicken read the mind of humans :) The original article: http://cogprints.org/5272/1/ghirlanda_jansson_enquist2002.pdf http://cogprints.org/5272/1/ghirlanda_jansson_enquist2002.pd...
- randomdrake 9y agoStudy: Chickens prefer beautiful humans. Citation: Ghirlanda, S., Jansson, L. & Enquist, M. Hum Nat (2002) 13: 383. Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-002-1021-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-002-1021-6 DOI: 10.1007/s12110-002-1021-6 Abstract: We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations. We discuss this result in the light of current debate on the meaning of sexual signals and suggest further tests of existing hypotheses about the origin of sexual preferences.
- QAPereo 9y agoI wonder what aspects of human beauty chickens are perceiving? Purely at a guess, I would say symmetry of features and signs of health/reproductive health. Given that they’re looking st faces, this seems most likely to me.
- Erlich_Bachman 9y agoIf chickens are anything like a neural network (and they kinda have to be at some level, perhaps a more complicated network than what we have in our computers now, but a learning discriminator network nonetheless) - it sounds like they would be reacting on the features which vary the most between male and female faces. They have trained chickens to discern between male and female faces. It would be logical to assume that they have found features that allow them to put each sample on that one-dimensional scale, and then use those features. It would mean that a more "beautiful" face is the one that is most distinguished in it's features from the face of another sex. This would be the most naive interpretation, but as always in nature, there can of course be layers of complexity on top of this.
- hacker_9 9y agoThere is also another point of view; the reason we have a concept of 'good looking' human faces to begin with is because, at some point, the human brain has to distinguish between looking at another ally (human) or a possible predator. So better looking people are just humans that look more.. human. It's not a stretch then for other animals such as chickens to also think this way, and they may get confused looking at less attractive human faces that resemble other predators that they are hard coded to run from.
- yoz-y 9y agoA rising trend in many Asian cultures is to consider extremely feminine men as beautiful. In the history the beauty standards have also shifted several times.
- deleted 9y ago
- randomname2 9y agoIt can be politically incorrect to state that some people are more physically attractive than others, but in the “is beauty objective” debate, this seems to be at least a sign that beauty is not totally subjective?
- IncRnd 9y agoI don't see how this text is correct: Typically breeds with white earlobes lay white eggshells, and those with red earlobes lay brown eggshells followed by There are exceptions, like Rhode Island reds, which have red earlobes and brown eggs. As far as I know, white=white and red=brown. It's that follow-on sentence that doesn't make sense; how can restating the same thing be an exception? Is there someone hear with more knowledge about this?
- The_Fox 9y agoI noticed that too. It must be an error in the article.
- IncRnd 9y agoThanks!
- notfed 9y agoI agree, it's not an "exception". (Also, it appears that Rhode Island Reds do indeed have red earlobes and browns eggs. [1]). Weirdly, this article links to another article [2] which makes a very similar statement, but instead uses the (valid) exception, "Lamona chickens have red earlobes, but their eggshells are white." [1] http://www.raising-chickens.org/rhode-island-reds.html http://www.raising-chickens.org/rhode-island-reds.html [2] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141213-eggs-chickens-insects-science-animals-sharks/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141213-eggs...
- IncRnd 9y agoThank you!
- yorwba 9y agoI found a study on that: http://www.genetics.org/content/genetics/13/6/470.full.pdf http://www.genetics.org/content/genetics/13/6/470.full.pdf Last sentence: "7. There was no evidence of any linkage between the factors for earlobe color and egg color." My guess is that having an association between earlobe color and egg color is convenient for breeders, so they prefer chickens with corresponding colors.
- lamarpye 9y agoI guess this explains it, my chickens have been refusing to go into the coop at night. I knew I gained some weight over the holidays, but I didn't realize how grotesque I became.
- harimau777 9y agoI think you've got it backwards. You are so attractive that the chickens want to stay outside the coop with you!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- everdev 9y ago> The chickens pecked more at screens showing symmetrical faces—revealing the same preferences as the 14 people who had done the same experiment. Basically, a tiny study claims that chickens like symmetrical faces.
- memebox3v 9y agoThe writing in this article is very poor quality.
- tzahola 9y agoHm. If only my grandma still had that chicken coop in the backyard, I could make a chicken-based Tinder crawler and get rich.
- meitham 9y ago"For instance, chickens can recognize up to 30 other individual chickens, and chicks imprint the image of their mother between 24 to 36 hours of hatching" Back in 1993 I sold a messaging Egyptian red dove, and its white dove wife separately. The messaging dove expectedly came back within 3 weeks, but I was surprised it couldn't distinguish its wife! It decided a newly bought white dove, which looked like its wife, was his wife and it the bullying didn't stop until she obliged.
- jackaroe78 9y agoThey don't love me they just love my bucket of grain :(
- tanakian 9y agoThis might be because we all are relatives, there was a creature which first had something like an eye, then an eye, and it's our common ancestor, so perception of the relative species is to some extent common. Or may be that's because there is a universal concept of beauty, as Feinman was guessing, but I doubt it.
- ShinTakuya 9y agoAll an eye does is give optical data to the brain. It's the brain that "decides" to interpret it a particular way. So it's interesting that the brain decides similar qualities (symmetry for instance) are more "interesting".
- javitury 9y agoThis article reminds me of classical history. For Greeks beauty was harmony which they translated to mathematical terms. In the article they only equate beauty and face symmetry. I wonder if chickens or other animals would be attracted to canons of body proportions. Or even to non-natural objects based on the golden ratio for instance. Time to test if the renaissance Vitruvian man was all right!
- pmlnr 9y ago> face symmetry One of the most terrifying things was those symmetrialised (is this a word?) faces of celebrities few years ago flooding the web. Completely inhuman look.
- zephyrppt 9y agoAm I missing something or does the article not explain why pecking at a face is interpreted as it is?