Does my bird recognize me?
I was asked the other week if I think the birds I work with âknowâ who I am and can distinguish me from other humans. Personally, I can tell that the hens and turkeys I train at the research laboratory, the raptors I work with in the evenings, and my own pet chickens behave towards me in a way thatâs different from how they react to other human beings, suggesting that they do recognize me as an individual. But, as a someone working in behavioural research and running a science-based blog, of course Iâm not going to leave you all with nothing but personal anecdotes!
Hypothetically, chickens (and other birds that live in complex social groups) are capable of telling the difference between human faces, at the very least. We can make this assumption based on the fact that 1) individuals living in societies with selective/affiliative relationships/hierarchies (as chickens most certainly do) have to be able to differentiate between each other and remember each othersâ features (eye position, beak length, feather colour/pattern, movement/behaviour pattern, vocalizations, etc.) to survive (Iâve previously touched on this here). If no one recognize anyone and keep track of whoâs above and below who, there would be total chaos! 2), Pigeons have been trained to discriminate not only between different peopleâs faces, but between different genders and emotions as well (Watanabe and Masuda, 2010). There are no official scientific reports of similar tests being done with chickens that I could find, but based on their behavioural biology, and the things that Iâve personally trained chickens to do for my research, Iâm confident that theyâd be more than capable of it, too.
(Photo from https://experiment.com/projects/how-do-birds-see-the-world)
So, while itâs more than likely that chickens can discriminate between different human faces, this does not strictly mean they recognize their subject as individuals, per se. Individual recognition requires that the bird can recognize someone as a whole, and not just a forward-facing portrait of that person, as most recognition experiments do (Tibbetts and Dale, 2007). The bird has to be capable of forming a mental image of an individual from any angle, and also be able to use other identifying features other than the face, such as the personâs mannerisms and voice, like I mentioned above. Apparently, pigeons have difficulty with this. And again, thereâs nothing in the literature for it using chickens as a subject. But, I think any backyard poultry owner whoâs experienced the joy of their birds eagerly running over for treats or cuddles while ignoring other humans would strongly agree that they recognize their owner (and have positively associated them with food and maybe even affection, no less!), especially if you hatch your own chicks and have them imprint on you.
(Gyrfalcon photo by me, please ask before re-posting)
On a side note, letâs consider non-social birds, like raptors. Most raptors, with a few exceptions, live solitary lives in the wild outside of breeding season. They donât live in large groups, and donât have to deal with pecking orders. At the very least, they might have to remember if theyâve had to chase away the same intruder from their territory before, or if they chose the same partner to mate with the previous year. When Iâm doing shows/presentations with my raptors, people frequently also ask me if the bird Iâm holding âknowsâ me. I respond by saying that itâs more likely that things are the other way around - I know the bird very well. I know how to approach and handle the bird in the ways that make them feel most comfortable, I know what the possible stressors are in its environment that sets them off that I have to work to avoid, and all of their other quirks. All of this knowledge/understanding of the bird helps me give them as positive an interaction with me as possible during every training session, resulting in them being more comfortable with me, as opposed to a novice trainer/someone who has never worked with that specific bird before. This may also partly factor into why chickens behave differently in response to certain owners, compared to other humans they encounter. For example, a big part of the reason that my chickens seem to always want to be near me (other than the fact that Iâm basically a constant source of treats), but avoid my parents, probably has to do with the fact that I specifically know how to walk up to/pet/feed them without accidentally startling or intimidating them.
As another side note, some birds discriminate and remember human faces for years, without tons of training involved. These include species in urban environments that often interact with humans. Mockingbirds that are disturbed by a human in a mask while theyâre sitting on their eggs will display increasingly threatening behaviour (alarm-calling and mobbing) with each day the masked intruder appears (Stehlin et al., 2017). However, they behave towards someone in a new mask as if theyâve only encountered them for the first time. Again though, the researchers couldnât prove for certain whether this was due to recognition, or just discrimination.Â
(American crow photo by me, please ask before re-posting)
A more famous example here on tumblr might be a similar experiment done with crows. Researchers wore masks and trapped crows, who responded by making vocalizations used as threats to ward off predators. Amazingly, these crows made the same calls if they saw someone wearing the same mask three years later (Marzluff et al., 2010). Itâs also been shown that different regions of their brains respond to different emotional states in response to the mask (Marzluff et al., 2012). In another experiment, one group of crows was trapped by a researcher wearing a âthreateningâ mask, while the other group was captured, but also fed by a researcher wearing a âcaringâ mask. Seeing either the threatening or caring mask would activate different neural circuits in the crowsâ brains - the first associated with negative emotions, and the second with reward. Itâll probably be a long time before any lab gets the funding to do PET scans on chickens, but until then, I think us doting chicken-lovers will happily agree that our birds know and recognize us!
(Photo from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7W95cXU24E)
Watanabe S, Masuda S. Integration of auditory and visual information in human face discrimination in pigeons: Behavioral and anatomical study. Behavioural brain research. 2010 Feb 11;207(1):61-9.
Tibbetts EA, Dale J. Individual recognition: it is good to be different. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 2007 Oct 1;22(10):529-37.
Stehlin JA, Crook-Hill J, Bailey B. Human Facial Recognition by Northern Mockingbirds. Papers & Publications: Interdisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Research. 2017;6(1):10.
Marzluff JM, Walls J, Cornell HN, Withey JC, Craig DP. Lasting recognition of threatening people by wild American crows. Animal Behaviour. 2010 Mar 1;79(3):699-707.
Marzluff JM, Miyaoka R, Minoshima S, Cross DJ. Brain imaging reveals neuronal circuitry underlying the crowâs perception of human faces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2012 Sep 6:201206109.
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