A new study of bird behavior [www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061118/fob6.asp] adds to a burgeoning body of evidence that birds aren’t the bird-brains they were once thought to be.

Researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, reported that the varied clucks of chickens qualify as representational signals. It was already known that chickens have a repertoire of about 30 different calls (at least that we are aware of; the chickens may know more). But when, for instance, a rooster makes a distinctive "tck tck tck" call, it brings a nearby hen running to take the morsel from the gallant rooster’s beak, or to search for it in the grass. When the Macquarie team broadcast a recording of the food-call, hens who had recently been allowed to peck clean a floor scattered with corn kernels looked down for barely a third as long as did hens who hadn’t been fed (and who therefore didn’t know whether or not there was any food present). Thus, the call is not an automatic trigger for some reflex to search the ground; the birds respond flexibly according to their state of knowledge.

Frankly, this nice study is more a measure of science’s reluctance to acknowledge animals’ savvy awareness than it is a measure of bird intellect. It’s only because scientists have recently begun to accept the once heretical notion that animals think, that studies like this are being done. Of course, the chickens were demonstrating what they were doing all along and it only took someone to take notice. Several years ago, a friend of mine, who runs a sanctuary for abused and neglected farmed animals, pointed out to me the rooster’s food-call, which she observes regularly. Roosters are also known to occasionally fake it by food-calling when there is no tasty morsel to be had; it’s a cheap (cheep?) way to curry favor without losing any grub. And consistent with birds being autonomous, not automatons, roosters don’t bother calling when no hens are about and they only dare fake it when the hen is far enough away to be unable to detect the ruse.

My sanctuary friend also educated me on the birds’ "aerial predator alert" call. One day, all the chooks suddenly made a mad dash into their shed. As I looked down in blissful ignorance, Terry was gazing at a hawk gliding overhead. And lest you think a chicken’s alarm call is reserved for chickens only, an outdoor warren for rescued rabbits adjoins the hen barn, and the rabbits have also learned to dart for cover whenever they hear the hens’ air-raid siren.