How Many Words Do Chickens Speak?

Anyone who spends much time around chickens can tell by the sounds they make if they are frightened, contented, cautious, and a whole range of other emotions. But no one has definitively resolved the question: Exactly how many words do chickens speak?

Some scientists insist that the idea of chickens communicating through the sounds they make is mere anthropomorphizing — attributing human behavior to an animal. They cling to this notion because they believe that communicating through language is an important distinction between humans and animals.

24? 30? Or More?

A few progressive scientists — most likely those having grown up with chickens before getting educated — spend a lifetime studying the sounds chickens make and trying to figure out what they mean. In the middle of the last century, for instance, German physician Erich Baeumer teamed up with with Professor Erich von Holst at the Institute of Behaviour Physiology near Munich to photograph chickens and record their calls. Baeumer identified 30 distinct sounds made by chickens.

At about the same time, ornithologist Nicholas E. Collias of the University of California in Los Angeles studied red jungle fowl, from which most of our chicken breeds originated. He identified 24 distinct sounds. The difference in numbers between Collias’ list and Baeumer’s list may be attributed to such factors as:

• Where Collias identified a two-part call, Baeumer sometimes identified two separate calls.

• Where Collias identified the same sound used in different situations, Beaumer identified different calls.

• Where Collias identified different intensities of the same call, Baeumer identified separate calls.

As Collias pointed out, “the decision whether to distinguish one or two similar calls that sometimes intergrade can be rather arbitrary.” For a human example of the difficulty of identifying separate words, put your finger in front of your mouth and softly make the sound “shh.” You are communicating a request for silence.

If, on the other hand, you forcefully hiss a short “shh!” you are insisting on instant silence. In both cases the sound “shh” means hush, but inflection conveys important differences in meaning. So is that one word, or two?

No Fixed Number

Collias admitted that “because of intergradation between some signals and between different situations, no absolute size of vocal repertoire can be fixed.” But, he said, the size of the vocabulary isn’t as important as accurate descriptions that ensure everyone is referring to the same thing.

Until recently, scientists have used observation and videotapes to match the sounds chickens make with their actions. Additionally, audiospectrograms (graphs depicting sound waves) accurately map the sounds. Now researchers at The University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology use artificial intelligence to identify chicken calls. Specifically, they want to determine differences between sounds of contentment and sounds of distress.

To date, no one has developed a complete list of how many words chickens speak. Nor has anyone determined exactly what each specific sound means to the chickens. In fact, scientists don’t even agree on what to name each sound.

When I work quietly at the barn long after I normally would have left, I hear all sorts of chicken sounds. Not all of them have been cataloged by anyone. A lot of the sounds I hear are not even readily identifiable.

Sometimes too many chickens are talking at once, making it difficult to isolate any specific sound. Some sounds occur too infrequently to determine how and when they are used. So I’m betting that how many words chickens speak is a lot more than anyone’s best guess.