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Not the greatest of studies is it.Thanks for the link; some interesting comments and refs (especially https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2013.1296 , which we might want to discuss with the 'birds of a feather flock together' notion in mind...?), but I wish they'd been in less of a hurry. The methods used leave a lot to be desired, and I don't think I'll be logging the results.
Do you have links to any papers where differentiating between biological relatedness and social familiarity is the aim, or where those two things are clearly separated and there is no possibility of confusion (unlike with that paper; 14 days of separation is not enough imo). It is not clear to me how a roo can know his own offspring among the young of a single mixed clutch fertilized, incubated, and raised within a flock in which several males are present. (I haven't finished the RoyalSoc paper yet; maybe it's answered there.)
I don't have any more relevant studies. I did read some of the links some time ago but got bored. What's interesting for me is at least someone has thought about the issue.
As with many of these lab based studies I'm left with a number of problems. The first being what happens under lab conditions may not and often doesn't reflect what happens outside of the lab.
One of my favourite examples of this is the hens prefer roosters with big combs study. It would take pages of writing to cover all the things that are wrong with the study I read and even longer to pull to bits the popular science reports the study germinated.
We still have one seemingly almost insurmountable problem when it comes to studying other creatures and that is we, those who study, have a deep reluctance to view ourselves as no more than another creature from the same beginings as every other creature (hopefully this is tactfull enough to avoid instant rebuttal) This has meant that comparisons between ourselves and other creatures is still unfortunately discouraged. Some will call this anthropomorphism and the credo that discourages this is going to, and has got, in the way of most behavioural studies of other creatures.
My time of reading lots of studies for my area of interest, behaviour, has long gone. The topic is just too complicated for easy dissection and lab study. Stick me in a lab for a few days and I can guarantee the choices I'll make will be vastly different to those I would make in my usual environment.
These days and for some time now, I observe and consider what I've seen and in some instances report on it. If enough people state they have seen similar under similar circumstances then I have a theory. Get lots (significant numbers) of agreement then I've got a strong theory.
Facts, when it comes to behaviour are few and far between.
Do chickens know who they are related to?
Do the males show less aggression to their relatives when it comes to having sex with their wives?
The senior males I've known didn't seem to object to their sons and daughters having sex with each other. Fathers having sex with daughters has been very common in the groups I've looked after. Is this because there haven't been any alternatives? Nope, not in the groups I've seen.