They can blush when they have “goosebumps”: a team of INRAE researchers found that emotions also make chickens blush and this discovery offers a new avenue for assessing animal welfare.
Chickens have “more or less significant blushing depending on their emotional state,” reports the National Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) in a press release Tuesday, citing a study published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science.
It is thanks to imaging software and 18,000 photos of six Sussex breed hens studied from every angle over three weeks that INRAE researchers were able to distinguish shades of redness in this species of gallinaceae known for their laying.
In an orchard in the Loire Valley, the INRAE team was able to observe that when faced with mealworms, chickens blushed but that they turned scarlet when they had a negative experience such as capture.
In a resting context, their skin appears much lighter.
Based on these findings, the INRAE research team isolated 13 hens to accustom them to the presence of a human for five weeks. Compared to other chickens, the researchers were able to observe that the group subjected to the experiment had a lighter face, “reflecting a calmer state” in the presence of this human being.
“This index may indicate a more positive perception of human presence, compared to hens not accustomed to humans, and may constitute a new tool for assessing animal well-being,” INRAE advances in its press release.
This research opens other avenues for the INRAE research team who wish to explore the correlations of these blushes with other expressions of chickens such as the movement of the feathers on their heads.
Researchers would also like to understand the possible meanings of these blushes between hens, particularly during interactions of dominance or subordination.