Research on chicken cognition reveals sophisticated abilities including numeracy, self-control, and social learning, with important implications for how we assess their welfare needs.
The cognitive research on chickens challenges the common perception of these birds as simple, unthinking animals. Chickens demonstrate a range of cognitive abilities that in other species would be taken as strong indicators of sentience and welfare-relevant experience. Maternal empathy in hens - showing physiological stress responses when chicks are disturbed - is particularly striking evidence of emotional experience. These findings strengthen the case for higher welfare standards for the approximately 70 billion chickens slaughtered annually and the 8 billion laying hens in production at any given time.