Psychology In The News | Why Do Hens Blush?

A study conducted by French researchers at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment has discovered that female chickens can blush when scared or excited, and fluff their head feathers when content.

This discovery offers new insights into understanding bird emotions, potentially benefiting farmers in assessing their flock's well-being. While facial expressions are well-documented in humans and some mammals, the emotional world of birds has remained largely unexplored (although here at tutor2u, we covered an interesting piece of research on social interaction in parrots last year)

The study, published in Plos One, observed 17 hens of two different breeds over four weeks on a French farm. Routine behaviours as well as the hen’s responses to being picked up by humans, or hearing threatening noises were recorded. Researchers found that the exposed skin on hens’ faces reddened when they were fearful or excited. Conversely, hens tended to spike up their head feathers when relaxed, as observed during preening or resting.

Figure 1: Profiles of a hen showing different feather positions and skin redness, and the four regions of interest where redness was sampled. Source: https://doi.org/10.1371/journa...

Figure (a) is when the hen is at rest and not blushing. Figure (b) shows the same hen when it has been picked up and has noticeably redder skin. Figure (c) shows the same hen dustbathing and spiking its head feathers

This research marks the first time blushing has been linked to hens' moods, providing a novel method for assessing bird emotions. The findings suggest that farmers could use these indicators - low redness and spiked head feathers - to gauge the contentment of their flock.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS!

1. Plos (Public Library of Science) One is a peer reviewed journal. What is meant by the term ‘peer review’?
2. The hens were observed in woodland, on the farms where they lived. What type of observation is this?
3. Outline one limitation of this type of observation, in this study.
4. Outline how the researchers could have used event sampling to study the hen’s behaviour.
5. Outline how the researchers could have used time sampling to study the hen’s behaviour.

Challenge: How might the findings of this study have evolutionary significance?

Reference

Arnould C, Love SA, Piegu B, Lefort G, Blache M, Parias C, Soulet D, Levy F, Nowak R, Lansade L and Bertin A (2024) Facial blushing and feather fluffing are indicators of emotions in domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus) Plos One https://doi.org/10.1371/journa... (accessed 30.7.24)