Institute of Agricultural Engineering, University of Bonn, Nussallee 5, 53115, Bonn, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jun 19;14(1):14164. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-64743-9.
The increasing demand on adapting modern livestock farming to higher animal welfare standards requires a thorough understanding of a species' cognitive abilities to determine their adaptability. With the chicken being the world's most numerous birds in animal production, it is mandatory to identify its cognitive abilities and limitations in order to meet its needs. We investigated if chickens are able to use and understand the reflective properties of a mirror that is the correlation of reflections of food rewards and their real location. In total, 18 female chickens of two different breeds were tested in a mirror-mediated spatial location task. Eleven out of eighteen hens solved the task successfully and thus, possibly exploited the correlation between the reflection in the mirror and the real food reward. We found differences on a breed and on the individual level, with different amounts of time needed learning the association of reward and mirror image. The results imply sophisticated cognitive abilities in chickens, assuming they may be able to understand how mirror images represent objects in the real environment, and to make use of it during foraging. The chicken's cognitive ability might lead to a new understanding and provision of animal welfare-compliant production environments.
现代畜牧业为了满足更高的动物福利标准，对动物的需求也在不断增加，这就需要深入了解动物的认知能力，以确定其适应性。由于鸡是动物生产中数量最多的鸟类，因此有必要确定其认知能力和局限性，以满足其需求。我们研究了鸡是否能够使用和理解镜子的反射特性，即食物奖励的反射与实际位置之间的关系。在一项基于镜子的空间位置任务中，我们对 18 只不同品种的母鸡进行了测试。其中 11 只母鸡成功地完成了任务，因此可能利用了镜子反射和真实食物奖励之间的相关性。我们发现不同品种和个体之间存在差异，需要不同的时间来学习奖励和镜像之间的关联。研究结果表明，鸡具有复杂的认知能力，它们可能能够理解镜子中的图像如何代表真实环境中的物体，并在觅食过程中利用这一点。鸡的认知能力可能会导致对符合动物福利的生产环境的新的理解和提供。
