A common charge made against the hen is that she is a silly creature. It is a false charge. A hen is an alarmist, but she is not silly. She has a strong sense of disaster, but many of her fears seem to be well founded. 

~E.B. White “The Hen (An Appreciation)” 1944

When we got our first chickens nearly ten years ago, it didn’t take long for me to see they were far more intelligent than I had been led to believe by our society. It makes sense for people to tell themselves an animal they eat is not smart because, as I can attest, this makes life much easier. Still, after my own experiences, I wondered how people who actually kept chickens might also think chickens are dumb. Over time, I have developed a hypothesis.

At first, I had some chicken-keeping friends tell me that my chickens were “unusual.” At the time, I thought to myself, “Oh, yes! My chickens are special.” I have been at this long enough now that I have seen chickens from national hatcheries and from local farms; I’ve seen meat chickens, as as a wide variety of breeds, from heritage breeds to barnyard mixes. My chickens aren’t special.

There is a range in chicken intelligences, just as there is a range in human intelligences. There is also a range in the types of intelligences chickens possess, just as there are with humans. Just like humans, some chickens are more curious than others; some are simpler; some are easier to handle; some like to complain; some get along well with others; some simply cannot fit in. I think the main reason I tell chicken stories is that I want people to see this range in their personalities and intelligences and make connections. I have learned a lot about human behavior from being a farmer and studying animals. Understanding animal behavior helps me give my own species a little more grace. It helps me give myself a little more grace. But I digress…

This spring, I had an epiphany about why some people accuse chickens of being stupid. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. My husband, Ron, had built a fence around some baby peach trees and some clover he had planted in order to keep the chickens from scratching things up and digging holes. When things were grown up enough, Ron opened up the fence but didn’t get a chance to take the fencing down when a big storm came by one afternoon.

A few of the hens were caught in the fenced area as the rain was pouring down. To get out, they would have to go the opposite direction of the coop and then go around. It was a long way around. Our rooster sat in front of the coop calling and calling for the hens to come in. They could see our rooster and see the coop door but couldn’t see that they needed to go around the long way. Ron and I went out to try to help.

As we tried to herd the hens toward the gate behind them, they just kept panicking more and more. One was determined to get her little self through the fence in a straight line to the door. It took me a few minutes to capture her and carry her to the coop.

“Stupid chicken,” Ron said.

“Oh, she’s not stupid. She was panicking. Think about how many stupid decisions we make when we are stressed and panicked,” I said.

I reminded him of all we know about how our brains work and how stress has such a negative impact on our ability to think clearly and reasonably. Chickens, as well as any other animal, would be the same for sure.

Ron listened to this and agreed. As I thought about it later, I thought of every story I had ever heard from a chicken keeper who seemed to want to prove to me that their chickens were, indeed, stupid. Every single story involved stress for the chickens. In most cases, the person themselves was causing the stress. In fact, in some of the cases, the chicken keepers would soon be eating those chickens, so I feel like the chickens were certainly justified in being stressed and getting worked up. As E.B. White so aptly pointed out, a chicken’s fears are certainly well founded.

Chickens are, after all, prey. While they are also predators and will mess up a poor frog, there are many things that will eat a chicken. It makes sense that they are wound pretty tight and can easily panic, leading to some poor decision making skills.

But here’s what the research tells us, and there is a growing body of really powerful research. According to a 2017 meta-analysis published in the peer-reviewed journal Animal Cognition, chickens can make inferences, do basic math, and are highly emotionally intelligent. Some of the key takeaways from the analysis include the following:

1. Chickens have distinct personalities and are cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally complex individuals.

2. Chickens experience fairly complex positive and negative emotions and have shown evidence of empathy.

3. Chickens exhibit social learning in complex ways that are similar to humans. Chickens also exhibit Machiavellian-like social interactions. (Oh, this last part is so true and fascinating to me.)

4. Chickens perceive time intervals and may be able to anticipate future events.

5. Chickens have the ability to demonstrate self control and may have some self awareness.

6. Chickens have the capacity to reason and make inferences. Researchers assert chickens demonstrate something called transitive inference, which humans are capable of at about age seven.

7. Chickens have complex systems of communication, something that is shared among other highly-intelligent animals, including primates.

These are just some of the compelling findings, and as more research continues in situations where chickens are studied in comfortable environments as opposed to in labs, more information is coming forward about just how fantastically intelligent these animals are.

What this means for us as humans who eat chicken, I do not know, but I hope it means that we will start the work to ensure that chickens are treated well and with respect while they are alive, whether they are providing us with food through laying eggs or providing us with meat.

At the very least, the next time you hear someone say that chickens are stupid, you can point them to some compelling research to the contrary.

Further Reading

Under the Henfluence by Tove Danovich, 2023

How to Speak Chicken by Melissa Caughey, 2017

Birdology by Sy Montgomery, 2011

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Barn? To Sign Up for the Scientific Study by Emily Anthes, 2022