Chickens Never Learn

By Josh Bloom, Associate Director of Poultry Cognitive Disillusionment

Some lunatic recently sent me an article from a very old Life Magazine entitled "Chickens Never Learn". The 1954 photo of a goggle-wearing chick had me but good, although the article might even be funnier. (I can't show the exact photo because the dickweeds at Getty Images have it, along with the rest of the universe, copyrighted.) Here's what the article had to say. More or less. 

Although admittedly unlikely, if you’ve ever watched backyard chickens pecking aimlessly at the dirt and thought, “This bird is clearly attempting to learn quantum mechanics,” it’s time to recalibrate your expectations. Science spoke on this topic back in the mid-20th century, and what it said was not that surprising: chickens aren't too bright.

Don't blame me (or Colonel Sanders) for this conclusion. Instead, Dr. Eckhard Hess, an animal behavior specialist at the University of Chicago, decided it was time someone tackled the real mystery of the universe: Can a baby chick figure out where lunch is if you scramble its eyeballs with science? Let's take a peep (sorry) at the trial! 

The Treated "Leg" (sorry again)

Dr. Hess outfitted newly hatched chicks with what can only be described as if rubber aviation helmets mated with carnival glasses. These “helmets” came with prism eyepieces that shifted the world sideways so that food in front of the chick appeared to be off to the left or right. The result? Not so good.

The goal of the experiment was "noble" enough: to determine whether chicks locate food through learning, instinct, or sheer dumb luck. Spoiler alert: it's mostly the last one.

Immediately after hatching, before they could even build a pecking résumé, the chicks were goggled up like tiny poultry pilots. Deprived of normal vision, the chicks began pecking where they thought the food was... which is to say, not even remotely where it actually was. [1]

Unfair!

Can you really blame the goggled chicks for staggering around wildly, being unable to see straight? Hell no. Watch the Yankees try to hit a baseball. 

The control clutch

Normal chicks, unburdened by headgear, quickly learned to adjust and peck directly at the food. But their visually compromised brethren acted like drunk dart players with a Bloomingdales bag over their heads. Long after their control-group cousins had locked in on their lunch, the goggled chicks continued pecking at shadows and hallucinations, blissfully unaware of the grain lying just out of reach.

This wasn’t just bad aim; it was a devastating blow to chicken kind's intellectual aspirations. If you were a chicken with dreams of graduate school, this study shut the coop door pretty hard.

Dr. Hess concluded that these chicks weren’t learning anything. No adaptation, no compensation, no “aha!” moment. Just a lot of enthusiastic but tragically misguided pecking. 

Modern science cracks open previous findings

Since 1950 one could argue that we've advanced scientifically. (One could also argue that we've regressed, but let's leave RFK out of this.) It turns out that Dr. Hess's conclusions were not entirely correct.

Modern research has shown that chickens aren’t total airheads. They can do math, remember faces, and even empathize, that is, when they're just not when wearing headgear that makes them think food is located on an alternate astral plane.

So the next time someone calls you a “birdbrain,” you might want to ask: Are we talking normal chick or prism-goggle chick? Because that makes all the difference.

And if your GPS ever glitches and tells you to turn left into a lake, take comfort in knowing you’re not alone. Somewhere out there, a chicken in goggles is doing the exact same thing—with equal conviction, and the same result: no snack.

I'd love to continue to explore this critical discussion but my brain is fried. <--- BOO! Instead, let's just end with a stupid joke.

Q: Why did the chicken stay on one side of the road?

A: It was too stupid to cross.

Photo: Flickr

NOTE:

[1] If the Poultry Anti-Defamation Council takes offense at this article, fine. Just don't egg my car.