Deaf rooster

[ebonykawai]

Yeah. This is scary.

Quote:
I second that.....

 

[hooligan]

Mentally warped.

 

[Cheekon]

Why impair an animal for your own gain? It's obvious that you are unsuited to keep one so maybe you should focus on just keeping hens....

 

[greyfields]

If we include "tone deaf", then yes I have about 15 of them.

 

[silkiechicken]

Birds, unlike mamals like us, have the ability to regenerate their ear hair cells. That means that even if they "went deaf" from listening to headphones too loud or going to one too many rock concerts, they can grow back the damaged hair cells and regenerate their hearing!

Didn't click the link, but there is active research in ear hair cell regeneration in hopes of being able to learn why they can do it and why we can't, so that maybe, some day, humans with hearing loss can regain their hearing though therapies.


Edit:

Ok, so I got curious and actually skimmed the paper...They didn't make the 18 leghorn roosters that were between 12-15 weeks old deaf for the sake of making them deaf to study any crowing or behavior.

The premise of the study was to better elucidate the mechanisms of avian hair cell growth in response to damage. A sound is sent into the ear and the resulting electrical signal is recorded. Why is an electrical signal recorded? It is because to hear, mechanical waves are turned into an electrical signal that can be sent to our brains for processing. By sending in various frequencies, different portions of the ear (cochlea) are stimulated, and thus different electrical signals will be generated by the depolarization of ear hair cells and in the study, instead of being sent to the brain, it was recorded by the researchers for them to work their magic on in understanding what is going on.

So the paper was about hearing research to understand hair cell regeneration.

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
You're probably right in a sense, but unless the question is asked/studied, there will never be a solution to the noisy rooster dilemma, and many thousands of people will not be able to have them. It does no good to say, "It can't and shouldn't be done," especially when we don't even know what IT is.
I'm not actually thinking of doing anything or having anything done to a rooster myself, but somewhere along the line SOMEBODY needs to research the question, perhaps Purdue University, and who better to push for the research than people who have chickens. We can rest assured that the large chicken factories and their lobbyists don't want a lot of private citizens producing fertile eggs.

BTW, I specifically asked my original question of those who had or knew of a deaf rooster. Those who are close-minded and can offer no responses other than insults, added/showed nothing more than their "the world is flat" attitude. If they're such wannabe defenders of roosters, they might ask themselves how many roosters might be allowed to live if they did not crow.

 

[hooligan]

I don't think anyone here would consider themselves close minded for NOT wanting their roosters to have their hearing damaged for the gain of not having it crow.

Medical experiements like this should not happen, just another senseless way to harm animals and have the gov't pay for...they could spend our tax dollars in much better ways than that.

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
If that's not close-minded, what is? I don't believe you speak for everyone if a humane way of doing (IT?) could be devised, and the "medical experiments" wouldn't have to be limited to hearing.

 

[hooligan]

Well it is not improving the bird for it to have what most vets would call a defect.

What other experiments would you have done to them? And why would you think crowing is a bad thing, when you got your birds I am sure you knew the roosters crow, no stopping it

Its not like crowing is a disease and it needs to be 'fixed' in some way. This is what roosters DO, and have done since the beginning.

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
Hooligan, read your reply above and ask yourself if anything you say there isn't something that any ten-year-old doesn't know. None of it has anything to do with changing the status quo of what I was talking about. If you can't figure out why crowing is considered a fault by many people... Just because it's "...what roosters DO, and have done since the beginning" doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be changed. Frankly, I see very little good use for their loud crowing, and if science could come up with a way to quieten them down, it'd be a blessing for the roosters and their owners who want to keep them.