Empathy Articles By Topic
> Chicken Empathy
Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?... Answer: It had
empathy for the other side. ;-)
2011-03-09 -
Study: Avian maternal response to chick distress
Proceedings of the Royal Society b The extent to which an animal is affected by
the pain or distress of a conspecific will depend on its capacity for
empathy.
Empathy most probably evolved
to facilitate parental care, so the current study assessed whether birds
responded to an aversive stimulus directed at their chicks. Domestic
hens were exposed to two replicates of the following conditions in a
counterbalanced order:
British scientists who looked
into the behavior of chickens and say they found hints of empathy
being shown - the ability to see things from another's point of
view - has not been received well from egg producers who fear
people will now refuse to buy
battery farmed eggs.
When discomfort was directed at their
chicks, mama birds responded with a stress response equivalent to
fight-or-flight behavior: Hens' heart rates increased and their
external temperatures changed. Image above shows the face of a
worried hen ...
You might think chickens are way
down the pecking order in the animal kingdom when it comes to
emotional intelligence. But it turns out that mother hens are such
attentive, caring parents that they 'feel' their chicks' pain.
...
Domestic chickens display signs of
empathy, the ability to ''feel another's pain'' that is at the
heart of compassion, a study has found. The discovery has
important implications for the welfare of farm and laboratory
animals, say researchers. ...
Chickens do more than scratch the
ground, cluck and lay eggs – scientists say they display empathy
with their young just like humans. Empathy, long thought to be a
defining human trait, causes one individual to be affected by the
emotional state of .
Another interesting bit about the
emotional lives of animals: Proceedings of the Royal Society B
(h/t Mongabay) has published a study showing that mother hens show
both physical and behavioral responses ...
A new study has shown that empathy,
long thought to be a uniquely human characteristic, is not just
the preserve of homo sapiens. Gallus gallus — or the common hen,
to you and I — may not be so bird-brained after all. Researchers
at Bristol University ...
A worried mother is often called a
mother hen, and new research is showing how true this expression
may be. When her chicks are in distress, a hen will react
physically, showing empathy. ...
The ability to feel someone's pain
or see their point of view was once thought to be uniquely human.
But recent studies suggest that animals may also experience
empathy. A new study has uncovered, for the first time, that
mother hens are such attentive ...
