No chicken will ever rival an adult human, but in a few early skills a day-old chick is ahead of a human baby. Chickens also count roughly, find their way around, warn each other about specific dangers and react to a chick’s distress.1PubMed Central. Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken Their intelligence is shaped for a chicken’s life, so the fairest comparison goes skill by skill rather than as a single IQ score.
Where a Chick Beats a Human Baby
Human babies take about 4 to 7 months to understand that an object partly hidden behind something is still one whole object.2ICTP. The Cognitive Chicken: Visual and Spatial Cognition in a Nonmammalian Brain Chicks show this understanding soon after hatching.3ICTP. The Cognitive Chicken: Visual and Spatial Cognition in a Nonmammalian Brain They are also born paying special attention to the way living things move.4PubMed Central. A predisposition for biological motion in the newborn baby Studies of human babies under 3 months had found no such preference, though later research has found it in newborns.5PubMed Central. A predisposition for biological motion in the newborn baby
The reason is survival. Chicks walk and feed themselves within hours of hatching, so they need working eyes and instincts almost at once. A newborn human is carried and fed for months, which leaves its learning free to unfold slowly. A head start is a survival need, not a sign of greater overall intelligence.
Neither a baby nor a chick can answer questions, so researchers watch where they look or walk. A longer look at something surprising suggests it broke an expectation.
Can Chickens Count and Do Simple Math
Day-old chicks can tell different numbers of objects apart and pick out an item by its position, such as the fourth in a row.6PubMed Central. Towards numerical cognition’s origin: insights from day-old domestic chicks When 3 and 2 familiar objects disappear behind two screens, 3- to 4-day-old chicks go to the screen hiding more.7PubMed Central. Arithmetic in newborn chicks They still pick the right screen when objects are moved one by one between screens, which takes adding and subtracting.8PubMed Central. Arithmetic in newborn chicks To do this, chicks need to know that a hidden thing still exists.9Utrecht University Research Portal. Object Permanence
Their math has clear limits, though. Chicks could not tell 3 objects from 4 when each was shown one at a time.10PubMed Central. A strategy to improve arithmetical performance in four day-old domestic chicks (Gallus gallus) When the same items were shown in small groups, such as 2 plus 2, they chose the larger set.11PubMed Central. A strategy to improve arithmetical performance in four day-old domestic chicks (Gallus gallus) Chick math is rough estimating of small amounts, not counting the way a child learns to count. Even rough estimating pays off: choosing the bigger pile of food helps every day, and staying with the larger group of flockmates is safer from predators.
How Chickens Find Their Way
Chicks remember where a hidden goal is and can orient using the sun.12Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Navigational ability in the domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus) They also use landmarks, distances and the shape of a room to find a goal.13PubMed Central. Spatial cognition and the avian hippocampus: Research in domestic chicks They tend to rely on single landmarks rather than a whole pattern of them, though.14PubMed. Spatial cognition based on geometry and landmarks in the domestic chick (Gallus gallus) A memory area of their brain encodes locations much as the matching area in mammals does.15PubMed Central. Spatial cognition and the avian hippocampus: Research in domestic chicks So chickens likely hold something like a mental map of their space.16PubMed Central. Spatial cognition and the avian hippocampus: Research in domestic chicks
In a backyard, hens learn where the feeder, nest box and coop door are. Moving those items can confuse them for a while. A free-ranging hen heads back to familiar spots and hiding places, so when you introduce new birds, keep the key landmarks where they are.
Planning Ahead and Holding Back
Self-control here means waiting for a better reward. Offered 3 seconds of food after a 2-second wait or 22 seconds after a 6-second wait, hens chose to wait for the larger reward.17PubMed Central. Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken That choice shows they weigh future outcomes, not just what is in front of them. With smaller differences, hens acted impulsively.18Animal Behaviour. Can domestic fowl, Gallus gallus domesticus, show self-control? Like people, they value a delayed reward less because it feels less certain.19Animal Behaviour. Can domestic fowl, Gallus gallus domesticus, show self-control?
Stopping an impulse is harder. When food sits inside a clear tube, chickens got the detour right only about 23% of the time, against about 73% for crows.20PubMed Central. Learning and motor inhibitory control in crows and domestic chickens The bird has to walk around to the open end instead of pecking the glass. Chickens improve with practice but start out poorly.
Chicken Talk and Calls With Meaning
Roosters give one alarm call for ground predators and a different one for threats from the air.21Animal Behaviour. On the meaning of alarm calls: Functional reference in an avian vocal system Hearing the aerial call alone, hens run for cover, crouch and look up.22Animal Behaviour. On the meaning of alarm calls: Functional reference in an avian vocal system The ground call makes them stand tall and scan around.23Animal Behaviour. On the meaning of alarm calls: Functional reference in an avian vocal system Aerial calls also vary with how big, fast and close the bird overhead is.24Animal Behaviour. Fowl communicate the size, speed and proximity of avian stimuli through graded structure in referential alarm calls
Food calls can be honest or a trick. Roosters call faster for better food.25Animal Behaviour. Food calling in the domestic fowl, Gallus gallus: the role of external referents and deception Yet about 45% of food calls were made with no food around.26Animal Behaviour. Food calling in the domestic fowl, Gallus gallus: the role of external referents and deception Those empty calls came when the hen was farther away, which suggests a lure.27Animal Behaviour. Food calling in the domestic fowl, Gallus gallus: the role of external referents and deception Chicken calls appear deliberate and may take into account who is listening.28PubMed Central. Sophisticated Fowl: The Complex Behaviour and Cognitive Skills of Chickens and Red Junglefowl The calls carry meaning, like a word for “hawk,” but they lack grammar and can’t combine into new sentences.
You can learn to read your own flock. A sharp call followed by crouching hens often means something passed overhead. A rooster’s rapid clucking while picking up and dropping bits of food usually announces a treat.
Learning From the Flock
A mother hen guides chicks toward good food and away from harmful items.29Applied Animal Behaviour Science. How animals learn from each other Hens also learned to peck a key for food by watching a trained bird, and they learned most from watching dominant birds.30Applied Animal Behaviour Science. How animals learn from each other Hens ate more of a new red food after seeing others eat it eagerly.31Animal Behaviour. Social learning influences the preferences of domestic hens for novel food There was no sign they learned to avoid food by watching others show disgust.32Animal Behaviour. Social learning influences the preferences of domestic hens for novel food
This is useful when you keep chickens. Introduce new feed with a confident older hen present. Young birds raised with a hen often forage better, and a new flock member picks up routines faster from established birds. Humans teach deliberately with words, which hens don’t, so chicken learning by watching is real but narrow.
Do Chickens Have Feelings and Empathy
When their chicks faced a mild puff of air, hens became more alert, stopped preening and their heart rate rose.33PubMed Central. Avian maternal response to chick distress They called to their chicks more, even though the chicks made few distress calls.34PubMed Central. Avian maternal response to chick distress So hens have at least one core building block of empathy.35PubMed Central. Avian maternal response to chick distress They also combine chick cues with their own knowledge of the danger to decide how to react.36Animal Behaviour. Protective mother hens: Cognitive influences on the avian maternal response
This is emotional reaction to another’s distress, not imagining their thoughts. Humans add a deeper understanding of why someone suffers.
That matters for welfare. Stressful handling of chicks can upset the hen too, and calm routines help a broody hen and her brood.
Senses Humans Don’t Have
Humans have three types of colour cones. Chickens have four, including one for violet and ultraviolet.37PubMed Central. Avian Ultraviolet/Violet Cones Identified as Probable Magnetoreceptors They see colours and patterns in feathers and food that are invisible to us. These cones contain a substance thought to help birds sense the earth’s magnetic field.38PubMed Central. Avian ultraviolet/violet cones as magnetoreceptors Whether chickens use this for direction in daily life is not established.
Ordinary bulbs lack the ultraviolet chickens see in sunlight, so indoor birds may see a duller world. Access to natural daylight lets hens use their full colour vision.
Individual Chickens Think Differently
Individual chicks stay consistently bold or wary of new things over repeated tests.39PubMed Central. Metabolic rate does not explain performance on a short-term memory task or personality traits in juvenile chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) Calmer, slower-to-react hens learned a colour task better than jumpy, fearful ones.40PubMed. Individual differences in personality in laying hens are related to learning a colour cue association Yet exploring chicks learned to switch rules faster, while for adult hens the reverse held.41PubMed Central. The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl No single personality is simply smarter; it depends on age and task.
You may notice this in your flock: one hen solves the gate latch while others never do. Fearful birds may stick to habits and miss new routes, and patient, calm handling helps nervous birds learn.
Chicken Brains Next to Ours
Domestic chickens have a relatively larger forebrain than their wild ancestor, the red junglefowl.42PubMed Central. A comparison of telencephalon composition among chickens, junglefowl, and wild galliforms So domestication did not shrink chicken brains across the board.43PubMed Central. A comparison of telencephalon composition among chickens, junglefowl, and wild galliforms A chicken brain is still a tiny fraction of ours, but bird brain cells are densely packed, so size misleads.
Chicks can also sleep with one eye open and half the brain awake.44PubMed. Local sleep: a spatial learning task enhances sleep in the right hemisphere of domestic chicks (Gallus gallus) After learning a task, the half used most sleeps more, which may help lock in memories.45PubMed. Local sleep: a spatial learning task enhances sleep in the right hemisphere of domestic chicks (Gallus gallus) Humans sleep with both halves at once. Half-brain sleep lets birds watch for danger while resting.