Why oh WHY are my chickens spazzin'?? (UPDATE!)

Cloud movements in the wind can scare them and it's been windy where you are. Also, they can hear things at night and maybe a predator has been bumping around or maybe they've seen something. Mine freak out over whitetail deer. Hard to say for certain, Kat. Who knows what's in their little walnut-sized brains?

 

Please post your observance. This is interesting.

 

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!!

 

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My rooster flew up and hit the kitchen door today, trying to look in the window. I think he just smelled the pot roast!

 

I was recently reading about color vision in chickens. Light is used for behavior control and so this is important in research.

In one study, the author mentioned in passing that chickens do not have rod cells in their eyes, only cone cells. We learned about these light receptive cells in the retina when we were in junior high but I hadn't realized that it was possible to have 100% cone cells.

I did some thinking about this and some more reading about these cells. I knew that rod cells are important for vision at low light. Maybe cone cells were just more highly developed than rods, making them capable of seeing colors.

That might be true but rods are much, much better at sensing light than cones. Cones don't just see colors, they are much better at detecting motion. And, cones provide fine detail to sight.

Imagine how different this all would be. What do shadows look like with these eyes? What if you have motion-detection cranked up to the nth degree? With wind and fast moving clouds and shadows . . . . "Seeing like a chicken" must be CrAzY!!

Steve

 

Very interesting, Steve. That sure explains why chickens have such keen vision during the day, able to spot the tiniest of bugs on the ground, and yet act like "sitting ducks" for predators at night... because they can't see squat at night, huh? No wonder they seek the safety of their coop at dusk. I guess those little walnut-sized brains are smarter than we think.