Studies show chickens can tell the difference between colors and shapes! Watch our featured video. Chickens learn very quickly, you can teach your chicken to do simple tricks like choosing between colors and shapes in a matter of minutes.
Set up a quiet area to train your chicken. You can use treats or a clicker or both to train your bird to choose a particular color or shape. In the following video Chicken Camp 09.2009 with Bob Bailey it is quite clear that chickens can tell the difference between colors and shapes.
Chickens are used as a training model during a five day course, practicing mechanical skills and eye hand coordination.
"The average chicken is faster than the average dog, giving us a chance to improve our coordination and timing. Unlike dogs, you will know immediately if you are taking advantage of a chicken or pushing too hard too fast. Chickens don't give their trainers a second chances as often as our dogs do" (Chicken Camp 08.2009 with Bob Bailey shape and color discrimination movie. May 15, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VEJaJzfBto.
Chickens are used as a training model during a five day course, practicing mechanical skills and eye hand coordination.
"The average chicken is faster than the average dog, giving us a chance to improve our coordination and timing. Unlike dogs, you will know immediately if you are taking advantage of a chicken or pushing too hard too fast. Chickens don't give their trainers a second chances as often as our dogs do" (Chicken Camp 08.2009 with Bob Bailey shape and color discrimination movie. May 15, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VEJaJzfBto.
"Most studies of the ability to recognize partly hidden objects in chickens have employed a paradigm that involves imprinting just-hatched chicks onto a geometric shape, such as a red triangle, and testing them later to determine which of two versions (a partly occluded triangle or a triangle with a piece missing) they prefer (choose to be near).
Chicks choose the partially occluded triangle (Regolin and Vallortigara 1995), just as humans do. The reasoning behind this finding is that the chicks, like humans and some other animals, are “filling in” the occluded part of the triangle and, therefore, perceiving it as the whole object upon which they are imprinted.
Some studies, using different stimuli and protocols, have suggested the same general conclusion for both chicks (Lea et al. 1996) and adult hens (Forkman 1998). However, it isn’t clear that the numerous methods used to assess amodal completion in chicks and in adult hens are similar enough to reveal actual cognitive similarities between the two age groups (Nakamura et al. 2010). Indeed, even humans have difficulty with amodal completion under certain circumstances that pigeons and chickens do not (Nakamura et al. 2014).
These findings caution that there is a great deal of heterogeneity within even one region of cognitive abilities, in this case, amodal completion, across and within species".
Marino L. (2017). Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken. Animal cognition, 20(2), 127–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4
Chicks choose the partially occluded triangle (Regolin and Vallortigara 1995), just as humans do. The reasoning behind this finding is that the chicks, like humans and some other animals, are “filling in” the occluded part of the triangle and, therefore, perceiving it as the whole object upon which they are imprinted.
Some studies, using different stimuli and protocols, have suggested the same general conclusion for both chicks (Lea et al. 1996) and adult hens (Forkman 1998). However, it isn’t clear that the numerous methods used to assess amodal completion in chicks and in adult hens are similar enough to reveal actual cognitive similarities between the two age groups (Nakamura et al. 2010). Indeed, even humans have difficulty with amodal completion under certain circumstances that pigeons and chickens do not (Nakamura et al. 2014).
These findings caution that there is a great deal of heterogeneity within even one region of cognitive abilities, in this case, amodal completion, across and within species".
Marino L. (2017). Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken. Animal cognition, 20(2), 127–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4
