What do comb shades mean

[K0k0shka]

Speaking of chickens, intelligence, and the ineffectiveness of directly comparing results, there's one very cool study I read about recently, which suggests that chickens possess the kind of self-awareness usually tested for with the famous "mirror test". So far, very few animals pass the mirror test, meaning that they understand the mirror is showing their own reflection, and not a separate animal. Chickens are not among the select few. In the test, a dot of color is sneakily placed on the animal's face. When the animal looks in the mirror, the idea is that if they try to remove the dot from their own face, then they must understand that what they saw in the mirror represents their own face. Human children don't pass the mirror test until somewhere between a year and two years of age (my daughter passed it at about 14 months).

This test, however, has some serious limitations. It assumes that the animal cares about having something on their face, and would want to clean it up. But what if they don't care?

So a team of scientists decided to design a test using a more relevant behavior in chickens. Roosters have an instinct to protect the flock and to alarm others of danger. So when they see a predator, they will sound an alarm if other chickens are present. But if they are alone, they will stay quiet, so as not to attract attention to themselves. So the scientists conducted a two-part experiment. In part 1, they closed a rooster in a test space with a divider through which he could see another chicken. They projected the image of a bird of prey flying overhead. In the control group, the rooster was all by himself. They conducted the experiment on a large number of roosters, to get statistically significant results. The vast majority of alarm calls were made by the rooster who could see another chicken, and the lone rooster largely stayed quiet. Part 2 of the experiment replaced the second chicken with a mirror. And there were barely any calls at all from either group!

So what this demonstrates is that the roosters understood that the mirror represented their own reflection, and not a second chicken. Therefore, technically, the roosters passed the mirror test. But they needed a second experiment designed with their particular brains in mind. And that's why it's so hard to apply one-size-fits-all measures to different animals, or grade them on the same point scale. It just doesn't translate.

Here's a description of the study:
https://neurosciencenews.com/rooster-self-awareness-25119/

 

[IsaChicks]

Speaking of chickens, intelligence, and the ineffectiveness of directly comparing results, there's one very cool study I read about recently, which suggests that chickens possess the kind of self-awareness usually tested for with the famous "mirror test". So far, very few animals pass the mirror test, meaning that they understand the mirror is showing their own reflection, and not a separate animal. Chickens are not among the select few. In the test, a dot of color is sneakily placed on the animal's face. When the animal looks in the mirror, the idea is that if they try to remove the dot from their own face, then they must understand that what they saw in the mirror represents their own face. Human children don't pass the mirror test until somewhere between a year and two years of age (my daughter passed it at about 14 months).

This test, however, has some serious limitations. It assumes that the animal cares about having something on their face, and would want to clean it up. But what if they don't care?

So a team of scientists decided to design a test using a more relevant behavior in chickens. Roosters have an instinct to protect the flock and to alarm others of danger. So when they see a predator, they will sound an alarm if other chickens are present. But if they are alone, they will stay quiet, so as not to attract attention to themselves. So the scientists conducted a two-part experiment. In part 1, they closed a rooster in a test space with a divider through which he could see another chicken. They projected the image of a bird of prey flying overhead. In the control group, the rooster was all by himself. They conducted the experiment on a large number of roosters, to get statistically significant results. The vast majority of alarm calls were made by the rooster who could see another chicken, and the lone rooster largely stayed quiet. Part 2 of the experiment replaced the second chicken with a mirror. And there were barely any calls at all from either group!

So what this demonstrates is that the roosters understood that the mirror represented their own reflection, and not a second chicken. Therefore, technically, the roosters passed the mirror test. But they needed a second experiment designed with their particular brains in mind. And that's why it's so hard to apply one-size-fits-all measures to different animals, or grade them on the same point scale. It just doesn't translate.

Here's a description of the study:
https://neurosciencenews.com/rooster-self-awareness-25119/

That's cool!

 

[Squawkers]

Speaking of chickens, intelligence, and the ineffectiveness of directly comparing results, there's one very cool study I read about recently, which suggests that chickens possess the kind of self-awareness usually tested for with the famous "mirror test". So far, very few animals pass the mirror test, meaning that they understand the mirror is showing their own reflection, and not a separate animal. Chickens are not among the select few. In the test, a dot of color is sneakily placed on the animal's face. When the animal looks in the mirror, the idea is that if they try to remove the dot from their own face, then they must understand that what they saw in the mirror represents their own face. Human children don't pass the mirror test until somewhere between a year and two years of age (my daughter passed it at about 14 months).

This test, however, has some serious limitations. It assumes that the animal cares about having something on their face, and would want to clean it up. But what if they don't care?

So a team of scientists decided to design a test using a more relevant behavior in chickens. Roosters have an instinct to protect the flock and to alarm others of danger. So when they see a predator, they will sound an alarm if other chickens are present. But if they are alone, they will stay quiet, so as not to attract attention to themselves. So the scientists conducted a two-part experiment. In part 1, they closed a rooster in a test space with a divider through which he could see another chicken. They projected the image of a bird of prey flying overhead. In the control group, the rooster was all by himself. They conducted the experiment on a large number of roosters, to get statistically significant results. The vast majority of alarm calls were made by the rooster who could see another chicken, and the lone rooster largely stayed quiet. Part 2 of the experiment replaced the second chicken with a mirror. And there were barely any calls at all from either group!

So what this demonstrates is that the roosters understood that the mirror represented their own reflection, and not a second chicken. Therefore, technically, the roosters passed the mirror test. But they needed a second experiment designed with their particular brains in mind. And that's why it's so hard to apply one-size-fits-all measures to different animals, or grade them on the same point scale. It just doesn't translate.

Here's a description of the study:
https://neurosciencenews.com/rooster-self-awareness-25119/

Yes, that’s fascinating!!!

 

[Seaslug]

Speaking of chickens, intelligence, and the ineffectiveness of directly comparing results, there's one very cool study I read about recently, which suggests that chickens possess the kind of self-awareness usually tested for with the famous "mirror test".

Thank you for posting about this. It is a pretty clever way to come up with making the mirror test relevant to chickens. I read that elephants were thought to fail the mirror test for a long time until a researcher realized that no one had ever used a large enough mirror to really reflect an elephant's image. Once they did, elephants passed the mirror test.
I think that testing animal intelligence sometimes says more about the people doing the testing than the animals being tested.

 

[K0k0shka]

Thank you for posting about this. It is a pretty clever way to come up with making the mirror test relevant to chickens. I read that elephants were thought to fail the mirror test for a long time until a researcher realized that no one had ever used a large enough mirror to really reflect an elephant's image. Once they did, elephants passed the mirror test.
I think that testing animal intelligence sometimes says more about the people doing the testing than the animals being tested.

Absolutely. The people designing the tests need to be able to put themselves in the animals' shoes, and understand what the world looks like through their eyes, to be able to test them appropriately and draw meaningful conclusions from the tests.

I wonder what other animals would pass the mirror test, if it was done in a way relevant to them. Or how much individual variation there is within a species. Because I have definitely seen roosters attack their own reflection, believing it was a rival! But apparently there's enough of them out there that recognize it as themselves, too. I really wonder about cats, in particular. Plenty of funny videos out there of cats all puffed up, attacking their reflection as an enemy. But my experience with my own cat has been very different. She has never acted aggressively towards her own reflection, or reacted at all to the reflections of people. But that has recently changed. She's 17 years old and almost completely deaf, and doesn't hear us coming, so she startles easily. But she has started using the big tall mirror in the hallway (which goes down almost to the floor) to be able to tell if somebody is coming up behind her. I have seen her minding her business near the mirror, then I start walking towards her from behind (with the mirror in front of me), and she doesn't react until she sees my reflection in the mirror in front of her. She looks up at my reflection, then turns around and looks up at me, and comes toward me meowing in acknowledgement. So now I have started using the mirror to alert her that I'm coming. If I'm behind her and can see that she can see the mirror, I wave to get her attention to my reflection, and she turns around to see me coming. It's still unclear whether she recognizes the reflection as me specifically, or just as a generic human, but the important thing here is that she understands that the human in the mirror isn't in fact IN the mirror, or behind it, like other animals seem to think when they attack it or go behind it to look for the other animal. By turning around and looking up at me, she's showing that she understands the reflection IN the mirror represents something that's BEHIND herself, opposite of the mirror. And that's enough knowledge to show her understanding of the concept of a mirror. Which is enough to be impressive in its own right.

I think I can go further and assume she recognizes me as ME, too, because she turns around calmly and with her tail up. She is a very timid cat who's afraid of strangers, so if she thought my reflection was just any old random person walking through her house, she'd freak out, like she freaks out when a real stranger walks into the house.

So after we've seen that she understands the concept of a mirror, and then we draw the conclusion that she probably recognizes my reflection as me, based on her reaction, then it's not much of a stretch to suppose that she may recognize her own self in the mirror as well. However, that information isn't useful to her, so she doesn't act like she acknowledges it. What can a cat do with her own reflection, after all? It's irrelevant to her. And until recently, my reflection was irrelevant, too, because she had all her senses and could tell I was coming without the aid of a mirror. But now that she has lost her hearing, suddenly the mirror is proving useful. It fills a gap and gives her useful information - warns her that I'm coming up behind her - so she pays attention to that and responds to it. I wonder how many cats "failed" the standard mirror test, simply because seeing themselves in the mirror wasn't interesting or useful enough to them to elicit a response...

 

[Squawkers]

Absolutely. The people designing the tests need to be able to put themselves in the animals' shoes, and understand what the world looks like through their eyes, to be able to test them appropriately and draw meaningful conclusions from the tests.

I wonder what other animals would pass the mirror test, if it was done in a way relevant to them. Or how much individual variation there is within a species. Because I have definitely seen roosters attack their own reflection, believing it was a rival! But apparently there's enough of them out there that recognize it as themselves, too. I really wonder about cats, in particular. Plenty of funny videos out there of cats all puffed up, attacking their reflection as an enemy. But my experience with my own cat has been very different. She has never acted aggressively towards her own reflection, or reacted at all to the reflections of people. But that has recently changed. She's 17 years old and almost completely deaf, and doesn't hear us coming, so she startles easily. But she has started using the big tall mirror in the hallway (which goes down almost to the floor) to be able to tell if somebody is coming up behind her. I have seen her minding her business near the mirror, then I start walking towards her from behind (with the mirror in front of me), and she doesn't react until she sees my reflection in the mirror in front of her. She looks up at my reflection, then turns around and looks up at me, and comes toward me meowing in acknowledgement. So now I have started using the mirror to alert her that I'm coming. If I'm behind her and can see that she can see the mirror, I wave to get her attention to my reflection, and she turns around to see me coming. It's still unclear whether she recognizes the reflection as me specifically, or just as a generic human, but the important thing here is that she understands that the human in the mirror isn't in fact IN the mirror, or behind it, like other animals seem to think when they attack it or go behind it to look for the other animal. By turning around and looking up at me, she's showing that she understands the reflection IN the mirror represents something that's BEHIND herself, opposite of the mirror. And that's enough knowledge to show her understanding of the concept of a mirror. Which is enough to be impressive in its own right.

I think I can go further and assume she recognizes me as ME, too, because she turns around calmly and with her tail up. She is a very timid cat who's afraid of strangers, so if she thought my reflection was just any old random person walking through her house, she'd freak out, like she freaks out when a real stranger walks into the house.

So after we've seen that she understands the concept of a mirror, and then we draw the conclusion that she probably recognizes my reflection as me, based on her reaction, then it's not much of a stretch to suppose that she may recognize her own self in the mirror as well. However, that information isn't useful to her, so she doesn't act like she acknowledges it. What can a cat do with her own reflection, after all? It's irrelevant to her. And until recently, my reflection was irrelevant, too, because she had all her senses and could tell I was coming without the aid of a mirror. But now that she has lost her hearing, suddenly the mirror is proving useful. It fills a gap and gives her useful information - warns her that I'm coming up behind her - so she pays attention to that and responds to it. I wonder how many cats "failed" the standard mirror test, simply because seeing themselves in the mirror wasn't interesting or useful enough to them to elicit a response...

Very well said. Just because the animal doesn’t react to the the mirror test doesn’t mean that they don’t understand it.

 

[Love Donkeys]

While chickens do have some smarts and emotions, they are absolutely not smarter than a toddler. Let’s not get carried away here.

I'm pretty sure my chickens are smarter than my 27 y/o grandson!

 

[Squawkers]

I'm pretty sure my chickens are smarter than my 27 y/o grandson!

Knowing some young men, I’m sure you are right

 

[WaterfowlsPoultry]

Of course when my Orpington read about 10 weeks old I used a wound spray on her comb. I made sure it didn’t get in her eyes and I did my best to more drip it then spray it, but she still HATED it. 2 whole years later I got the same spray bottle out to check for a expiration date. She was half asleep at my feet when I was doing that. She lazily looked up and saw the bottle. In an instant she let out a scream of bloody murder and was gone. Like, poof… gone! It was hilarious. I also have an Easter Egger that I once taught to play the xylophone as well as a couple other tricks. I got the xylophone out about a year later, and she immediately started pecking it waiting for her treat as well as frantically doing every other trick she had learned. Chickens just never forget

I was moving some boxes out of the house, really old boxes, As soon as I stepped out the door some of the hens and my rooster ran over to me, maybe for treats or something, I pulled the box out and my rooster screams and sounds an alarm call, The hens all run to the coop and the rooster runs with them while screaming

 

[Squawkers]

I was moving some boxes out of the house, really old boxes, As soon as I stepped out the door some of the hens and my rooster ran over to me, maybe for treats or something, I pulled the box out and my rooster screams and sounds an alarm call, The hens all run to the coop and the rooster runs with them while screaming

That’s hilarious You stole their nests!! How could you?!