About This Page

Sentience is the ability to have feelings and emotions. It is important because it is the criteria by which we should determine if living beings of a particular species are deserving of moral consideration.

Closely related: Chickens: Numbers and General Information | Chickens: Injustices and Suffering

Points to Consider

A review of 266 research articles in 16 peer-reviewed journals reveals that chickens lead complex emotional lives, are behaviorally sophisticated, and have distinct personalities.

• In the paper “Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken,” Lori Marino examined 266 research articles in 16 peer-reviewed journals and found that…^[1] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens can experience happiness, boredom, and frustration.^[2] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens possess the capacity for episodic memory, which provides “evidence for an autobiographical sense of self in the past, present, and future.”^[3] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens exhibit self-control, a capacity not found in humans until age four and is associated with self-awareness and autonomy—the ability to think about and choose future outcomes.^[4] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens are capable of reasoning and logical inference.^[5] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens are as “emotionally and socially complex as most other birds and mammals in many areas.”^[6] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens can perform simple math and understand the ordinality of numbers.
  • Chickens have self-awareness—”a subjective awareness of one’s identity, one’s body, and one’s thoughts through time, distinguished from others.”^[7] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens are capable of a wide range of emotions, including happiness, fear, anxiety, boredom, and frustration.^[8] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens “are behaviorally sophisticated, discriminating among individuals, exhibiting Machiavellian-like social interactions, and learning socially in complex ways that are similar to humans.”^[9] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
  • Chickens “have distinct personalities, just like all animals who are cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally complex individuals.”^[10] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition 20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.

Chickens have a sense of the future, can anticipate future events, and delay gratification.

• Chickens have a sense of the future and thus have an interest in continuing to live^[11]Jennifer ViegasDiscovery News. “Chickens Worry about the Future. July 15, 2005. ^[12] Marino, Lori. “Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken.” Animal Cognition20, no. 2 (2017): 127–47.
• Chickens can anticipate future events, exhibit self-control, and delay gratification.^[13]Abeyesinghe, S. M., C. J. Nicol, S. J. Hartnell, and C. M. Wathes. “Can Domestic Fowl, Gallus Gallus Domesticus, Show Self-Control?” Animal Behaviour 70, no. 1 (July 1, 2005): 1–11

Having a smaller brain size does not infer cognitive inferiority.

• Prominent animal neurobiologist Leslie J Rogers, in her book on the brain functions of chickens, says that “the cognitive abilities of some avian species may actually rival those of primates,”^[14]Rogers, Lesley J. The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken. CAB International, 1995. 214
• Prominent animal neurobiologist Leslie J Rogers, in comparing chickens to mammals, states that “recent findings challenge assumptions that have been made about brain size and the superiority of the mammalian line of evolution.”^[15]Rogers, Lesley J. The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken. CAB International, 1995. 214
• According to a 29-author research paper on avian brains published in a neuroscience journal, the perhaps surprising cognitive abilities of the chicken is related to the fact that the chicken’s forebrain is similar to the forebrain of mammals.^[16]Jarvis, Erich D., Onur Güntürkün, Laura Bruce, András Csillag, Harvey Karten, Wayne Kuenzel, Loreta Medina, et al. “Avian Brains and a New Understanding of Vertebrate Brain Evolution.” Nature … Continue reading

Related Links

• On this website
  • Chickens: Numbers and General Information
  • Chickens: Injustices and Suffering
• On other websites
  • Websites
    • United Poultry Concerns (Advocacy group for domestic fowl)
  • Articles / Studies
    • Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken (Animal Cognition Journal)
    • Chickens Worry about the Future (ABC Science)
  • Videos
    • How Sentient Are Animals, Really? (Youtube)

Image Gallery for This Page

This gallery contains only one image—the social media sharing image for the page.

This is the image used when sharing the page “Chickens: Sentience and Cognition” on social media.

Footnotes