Chickens Have Friendships, Memories, And Reputations

RACHEL FELTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Rachel Feltman, sitting in for Ira Flatow this week. Later in the hour, the Clean Air Act of 1970 regulates America’s air quality. It’s worked so far, but what does the future hold for this landmark legislation? Plus, how tourist photos could help with penguin conservation.

But first, I want to spend some time with another popular bird– chickens. They don’t exactly have a reputation of being the sharpest creatures in the animal kingdom. I mean, it’s hard to think of another animal whose major claim to fame is running around with its head cut off. But talk to anyone who raises chickens and they’ll tell you that these birds are far more intelligent and social than we often give them credit for.

My next guest is among that flock and has firsthand experience of the bond between human and chicken– Sy Montgomery, author of the new book, What the Chicken Knows– A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird. She’s based in Hancock, New Hampshire. Sy, welcome to Science Friday.

SY MONTGOMERY: Well, I’m thrilled to be here.

RACHEL FELTMAN: So how has your understanding of chickens changed since you first started keeping them?

SY MONTGOMERY: Well, I went into having our first flock with beginner’s mind, and I didn’t really have any expectations except that I knew I would love them. Whatever they wanted to show me, I was going to be thrilled. And sure enough, day one, I was absolutely gobsmacked. I got a flock from my dear friend Gretchen Moran. It was a house warming or barn warming present. And she had raised these chicks at her house. And my husband and I went over to visit them when they were tiny, fluffy chicks, and when they were old enough, they came to live in our barn.

Well, I was absolutely certain that the minute I let them out of the barn, they’d become lost on our 8 acres of fields and woods. But Gretchen told me, just leave them in 48 hours, and when you let them out, they’ll know where they live and they will to come home at night.

And I got to tell you, when I was a kid, one time, we moved to a new house and I was literally lost in the backyard. But these chickens, not. And there have been scientific studies showing that these birds have incredible spatial abilities. That they can find the center of any given area instantly even in the absence of landmarks and even without ever having been there before. They are really, really good at finding out where everything is and understanding what their territory is, which I am not.

RACHEL FELTMAN: I was going to say, it sounds like they’re better at that than I am. So, yeah, chickens have these surprising innate skills, but what do they learn over time?

SY MONTGOMERY: Well, they remember the past and they anticipate the future. And that sounds like, wow, gee, that’s fantastic. But of course, this has enormous evolutionary value for almost everybody because if you don’t remember the past, you can’t anticipate the future, and you can’t be an active participant in your own fate.

So my hens, for example, remembered predator attacks, and they remembered the places that they had successfully hidden in the past. They also remember, at least– and this has been found also by researchers– that chickens can remember at least 100 different faces. And that’s chicken faces, but they remember our faces as well.

And they look at your face just like you would look at your friend’s face. You recognize your friend even if they’re wearing an overcoat or if they’re wearing a bathing suit, by looking at their face.

And these researchers discovered that when they dressed up chickens in costumes, as long as they left their faces OK, they, too, were able to find their friends, even when they were wearing something else. But if you messed with their combs or their beaks or their wattles, it was like putting a mask, a Halloween mask on somebody. They couldn’t tell who their friends were.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Wow. That’s very impressive, and also sounds like a completely delightful study.

SY MONTGOMERY: Dressing chickens, wouldn’t that be a good job?

RACHEL FELTMAN: So you’ve talked about how devoted you are to your chickens. What do we know about how chickens make sense of their relationships with their human caretakers?

SY MONTGOMERY: Well, to a chicken, your social life is really everything. Your flock is your cohesive social unit. It’s your community. And that can include people in the flock, just like I certainly include animals in my family, even if they’re not human or genetically related to me, we all feel that way.

But my chickens were able to perceive a subtle change in our relationship with our neighbors even before we did. This was the amazing thing. For a long time, we lived next door to this nice man, and we would see him every once in a while and we’d help each other out when we needed. Then he moved away.

Well, all during this time, our hens never jumped on the low stone wall that separated our properties even though their barn was closer to the neighbor’s house than to ours. Well, the next folks to move in after the house had sat vacant was this great family of a mom and her two kids, aged seven and nine, and they fell in love with our black and white spotted pig, Christopher Hogwood, and soon, they were over the house every day playing with the pig, playing with our dog, and playing with our chickens.

And we were over their house as well. And that was when I noticed this profound change in our flock’s behavior. They had never before jumped over that low stone wall, even though there were certainly delicious bugs and worms over there. But when they perceived that our two households had become one unit, immediately they annexed the neighbor’s property.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Wow. That is really cool. One thing that I found really interesting and hadn’t really thought about before reading your book is that a lot of people who keep backyard chickens only keep hens. So why do roosters get such a bad rap?

SY MONTGOMERY: Oh, it’s very sad. I mean, in some cultures, roosters are revered, and justly so. Some cultures say that when a rooster crows, it’s because he’s seen an angel. And I love that idea.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah.

SY MONTGOMERY: But a lot of people in suburban areas, I think, are disturbed to have someone crowing early when they’d rather sleep late. And the other thing that can happen, it doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes your rooster can turn on you and start attacking people.

Now the reason for this is that he’s defending his flock. And I found this out one time in an infamous moment when our minister came to visit. He was bringing over his new fiancée and her two small children and wanted to enchant them with our petting zoo. And they were a little frightened by the 750-pound pig when he came bucking out of his stall with his razor-sharp tusks.

So he said, “Well, kids, let’s meet somebody more your size,” and he started petting one of my hens. Well, what you do when you pet a hen is you start at their head and you go over their back, and the hen will often crouch and raise her arms a little bit, her wings a little bit. And what this is known as is the sex crouch, and it’s a position that she assumes so a rooster can jump on her and mate with her.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Hmm.

SY MONTGOMERY: Well, of course Graham didn’t realize he was doing anything wrong, but our rooster looked up from across the barnyard and he saw our minister having sex with one of his hens. So he came rushing over, and he had these big spurs, and he attacked our minister, who, unfortunately, was wearing shorts and bloodied his legs, terrified the children, upset the new fiancée, complete failure of a visit.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Well– and tell me about your neighbor who actually runs a rooster rescue. Now how is she able to soothe their more aggressive tendencies?

SY MONTGOMERY: Oh, Ashley Naegeli is so awesome. She lives catty-cornered across the street from us. And frankly, although we have acres of land, but I never hear them crowing. But she started rescuing unwanted roosters, roosters who had turned and people were afraid their kids were going to be hurt. Roosters who people just didn’t like them crowing and dumped them in the woods.

And what she says you should do to turn a rogue rooster into a gentleman is completely counterintuitive. She told me what you should do is pick them up and cuddle them.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Wow.

SY MONTGOMERY: Carry them around while you’re doing your chores. Just give them love. It is the most amazing thing. It doesn’t seem like anything you would normally do because roosters, they’ve got sharp beaks and they’ve got sharp spurs, and people just fear them. But she says pick them up in a blanket or a towel to keep those spurs away. Don’t keep his beak particularly near your eyes. But if you keep carrying them around and cuddling him, he will turn into the best friend you ever had.

RACHEL FELTMAN: So I know you’ve kept a bunch of different breeds over the years. Do you have a favorite?

SY MONTGOMERY: Well, our first flock, they were entirely a breed called black sex-links. And one wonderful thing about black sex-links is that the chicks, you can tell, just by looking at their color, which ones are going to grow up to be ladies and which might be roosters because you don’t want to have a whole barnyard full of roosters. They will often fight if there are any hens at all. They are very jealous husbands. So that was pretty awesome.

They were beautiful birds. They had red combs, upright combs, and they were very tolerant of the cold. And they laid delicious brown eggs. But later, we had some other breeds, including Lakenvelders, which is a word that means “a shadow on a sheet.” And they were white with beautiful black markings on their tail feathers and their wings. And we had Dominiques, a heritage breed related to the barred rock. I never actually met a chicken I didn’t like.

RACHEL FELTMAN: So you’ve obviously thought about chickens quite a bit. What’s your favorite chicken fact?

SY MONTGOMERY: I think any of the facts about how smart they are. That they can remember 100 faces. That each one has their own personality. And that their social lives are exquisitely important to them. Belonging to a flock is what matters. And this is something that really matters in human life, too. It’s something that we admire and we should recognize it in these chickens rather than dismiss them as these stupid, dirty, feathered automatons. Nothing could be further from the truth.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Absolutely. Sy, thank you so much for joining us.

SY MONTGOMERY: Oh, it was my pleasure.

RACHEL FELTMAN: Sy Montgomery, author of the new book, What the Chicken Knows– A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird. She’s based in Hancock, New Hampshire. If you want to see some pictures of Sy’s chickens, which I definitely do, go to sciencefriday.com/chicken. That’s sciencefriday.com/chicken.

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