To understand how hens visibly express emotion, researchers spent four weeks on a French farm observing 17 hens of two different breeds, Bertin said, filming their routine behaviors and their reactions to different stimuli. Researchers observed 17 hens on a French farm. INRAE Arnould BertinTo make their more general conclusions, researchers extracted images from every two seconds of film and selected ones that featured the hen in profile to best study them. Although researchers weren’t able to explain the mechanism by which hens blush in this study, they concluded that the cheeks and ear lobes were more revealing of the birds’ emotions than their comb or wattles. Building on the results of this study, Bertin hopes to investigate whether these displays of emotion are linked to the hens’ social interactions, as well the implications for animal welfare.

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Persons: CNN — Blushing, Charles Darwin, Aline Bertin, Bertin’s, ” Bertin, Bertin, –, INRAE Arnould Bertin Organizations: CNN, National Institute of Agricultural Research, University of Tours