Chickens are notoriously chatty animals. Although most people may only associate clucking noises with chickens, the birds make quite a variety of sounds.
Poultry scientists and engineers at the University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology have teamed up with farmers to try to decode the so-called “fowl language” spoken by chickens. The goal is to help farmers better understand what their animals are communicating.
They recorded chicken vocalizations while the birds were calm and during exposure to mildly stressful things such as increased temperature or ammonia. The vocalizations were then uploaded to a machine-learning artificial intelligence program to try to differentiate the sounds. The program was able to tell when the chickens had respiratory infections as well as discomfort from heat stress. This type of information would be quite useful to farmers who are interested in the health of their animals. .
For more on fowl language, visit: http://www.wardhenline.com/uncooped/communicative_abilities
Sources:
YouTube
Categories: Intelligence and Neuroscience, Stress
Tags: artificial intelligence, chicken, farmer, farming, language, poultry
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