Rooster Crowing Behaviour - Is it Easily Heritable?

[ChookieG]

That was an enlightening read and thank you for weighing in. Do you think the turkeys "learn" to be quiet or did the noisy ones got eaten so the turkeys evolved to be quiet through natural selection? I think it's an automatic reflex that can't be trained away. My turkeys gobble whenever someone claps hands, slams a door, starts an air compressor, passes gas, anything. If you could figure out how to "teach" a bird to be quiet I bet you could make a lot of money.

If you can toilet train a chicken, I'm guessing it can be done.. You can certainly train a roo to crow more often though.. which I stupidly did unintentionally... till it was too late... it started when I will go over to the run and throw scratch to them whenever my roo crowed thinking it would shut him up... but he quickly associated crowing with scratchies! The rest is history!

Like I said.. stupid!

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Very interesting observations. I summize from what you've said is environmental pressures can inadvertently affect genetic outcomes?

If so then let's hope that the principles of Epigenetics would play a dominant role in the selection of the chicken crow, which I mentioned in a previous posting that was discussing 'no crow roosters'. A cut-and-paste from that post for ease of reading: Essentially what we're seeing so far in the rather recent field of Epigenetics is that environmental influences/changes can be heretible in mammals. And this is contrary to the common norm that permanent changes in the DNA code have to occur for it to be passed down to the next generation so it is scientifically possible to inherit physical traits that are due to environmental influence/s.

Thanks for your input @Florida Bullfrog.

Absolutely. Long before I ever heard of epigenetics, I’ve been convinced there was an undescribed change mechanism in animals that is quick and intelligent, not slow and random. Its as if animals carry a Swiss army knife of body plans and behaviors in their genetics that allow them to adapt quickly and relevantly to their environments that triggers when they need it to, and that mechanism is the driving force of evolution, not random and accidental mutation. Epigenetics is now providing the scientific framework to explain those observations.

I take the view that all galliforms are different variants of the same bird. A chicken is a quail is a turkey is a guinea. They’re all just the same bird with variants in their body plans and behaviors.

That was an enlightening read and thank you for weighing in. Do you think the turkeys "learn" to be quiet or did the noisy ones got eaten so the turkeys evolved to be quiet through natural selection? I think it's an automatic reflex that can't be trained away. My turkeys gobble whenever someone claps hands, slams a door, starts an air compressor, passes gas, anything. If you could figure out how to "teach" a bird to be quiet I bet you could make a lot of money.

I believe they can learn. Not in the same way ours minds work but in a way that practically results in what we’d observe as learning and then what may become instinctual for further generations. I think wild turkeys retain more of an ability to learn due to dealing with predators on a daily basis.

I’m sure that natural selection via predation on more vocal gobblers effects them some, but I think going quiet is more of a learned behavior. It doesn’t take very long for turkeys to adjust to heavy coyote predation and to adjust again when the predation becomes temporarily lessened via human persecution of the local coyote pack. Furthermore it isn’t the gobblers that coyotes are generally preying on, its hens. The coyotes just use the gobblers to locate groups of hens.