Chicken Breed Intelligence

[raingarden]

It seems to me that modern chickens do not have to be as smart as their ancestors because modern chickens have their food served to them. Their ancestors had to work for it. So, maybe the most primative breeds have not had the smarts bred out of them yet.

But still, they are all brilliant and teach me something new every day.

 

[aart]

I’ve just gone through a situation that seriously made me question the basic survival instincts my chickens possess. Fortunately, I turned out to be the dummy, not the chickens, but it made me wonder if there are chicken breeds noted for their intelligence or lack thereof?

This cracked me up! so often the truth.

Not sure I'd ever tag a chicken as 'intelligent',
but some seem more savvy than other regardless of breed.

 

[Jester57]

Then it depends on the individual chickens. Any chicken is capable of learning something basic, like coming when called (all mine do). But as far as actual tricks go, it's really not something breed specific. You would need a calm, trusting bird, but also one that has an attention span longer than 2 seconds. Sebrights seem to be popular trick birds, but again, just because you have a Sebright doesn't mean it's going to do tricks.

Thanks, that’s what I was looking for. It appears that Sebrights have the reputation, regardless of each individual’s ability. Any others you’re aware of?

 

[Jester57]

It seems to me that modern chickens do not have to be as smart as their ancestors because modern chickens have their food served to them. Their ancestors had to work for it. So, maybe the most primative breeds have not had the smarts bred out of them yet.

But still, they are all brilliant and teach me something new every day.

You could say the exact same thing about people, really. We generally don’t have to outsmart an animal to eat every day, nor do we have to be able to identify edible plants. Maybe we should figure out who’s fattening us up.

 

[AGeese]

It seems to me that modern chickens do not have to be as smart as their ancestors because modern chickens have their food served to them. Their ancestors had to work for it. So, maybe the most primative breeds have not had the smarts bred out of them yet.

But still, they are all brilliant and teach me something new every day.

I would call most of the widely available domestics show, or fancy. The Red Jungle Fowl is still around both undomesticated and domesticated as game fowl. It retains the primitive instincts, but I don't know of any tests of its problem solving intelligence.

 

[raingarden]

They say pure-bred RJF no longer exist... but there must be something close.

It would be fun if there was a standard test for measuring intelligence of different breeds. The hard part would be deciding what "intelligence" means.
Here is a quick discussion of the problem:

https://ieltsdata.org/testing-animal-intelligence/