‘Chicken clicker study’ shows chooks smarter than we think

AN Adelaide academic says she has the proof that chickens are smarter than you might think.

16/03/16 - A "chicken clicker study" which is uncovering how smart chickens are, might just enlighten the George family of Fitzroy, about the behaviour of their chickens, "Figglehorn"," Polly" and " Lolly". Tilly,3 with" Polly". Picture Dean Martin

AN Adelaide academic says she has the proof that chickens are smarter than you might think.

For the past four years, University of Adelaide senior lecturer and animal lover Susan Hazel has had her first-year students study chooks.

Dr Hazel says the “chicken clicker study” shows chickens are intelligent creatures that can be taught to do tricks.

“In this study, undergraduate students were surveyed on their attitudes towards chickens before and after a practical class where they learnt to clicker-train chickens,” she said.

“Once the students gained experience with the chickens, they could see the personalities coming out of them and the chickens all ended up with names.

“We worked on them for 90 seconds at a time and the students found it surprising at how quickly they learnt to peck on a target or peck on a specific colour.”

She says the study shows chickens feel emotions such as boredom, frustration and happiness.

A focus of Dr Hazel’s work, who teaches principles of animal welfare and ethics at the university’s Roseworthy campus, is how animals learn.

“Our attitude towards animals are linked to our beliefs about their cognitive abilities, such as intelligence and capacity to experience emotional states,” the 52-year-old says.

Dr Hazel said studying chickens teaches students valuable lessons about animal training more widely.

“Sometimes dogs can guess what we want them to do but chickens couldn’t care less if they please us or not,” she says.

In addition to her yearly chicken clicker study, Hazel regularly works with a range of animals including fish, sheep, cattle, dogs and pigs.

Dr Hazel’s work is just one of a host of unusual research areas being undertaken in Adelaide.

Her colleague Simon Baxter spends his work day surrounded by butterflies.

The 39-year-old Australian Research Council (ARC) future fellow works on a range of insect-related projects ranging from butterfly mimicry to controlling agricultural insect pests.

He has travelled the globe studying the insects, most recently looking at butterfly wing patterns and mimicry.

“We’ve been sequencing genomes of mimetic butterfly species (butterflies that look the same but are different species) to try and understand or identify the genes involved that make them look so similar,” he says.

“It’s terrific fun to be out in the fields swooshing a net.”