4th May: International Respect for Chickens Day

To promote some respect for chickens, here are 10 things you may not know about them:

1. Chickens are highly intelligent. They know that an object still exists when it is hidden away, making them more intelligent than human toddlers. They can recognise up to 100 different faces, both chicken faces and human faces.
2. They make a lot of sounds, up to 30 different vocalisations which all mean something. It might be a call by the hen to get her chicks to come and eat, a sound made by chicks to let their mother know they are comfortable. Chickens even make different warning sounds for airborne predators and predators on the ground.
3. Hens even cluck to the unhatched chicks inside eggs, especially near hatching time, to encourage them to come out; and the chicks talk back.
4. Scientists have discovered that chickens are probably the closest living relative to a T. Rex.
5. There are 25 billion chickens on the planet, making them the most common bird. There are more chickens than people.
6. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I declared the rooster the emblem of Christianity. In the ninth century Pope Nicholas I ordered that the figure of the rooster should be placed on every church steeple, which is why so many weather vanes are in the shape of a rooster.
7. The fear of chickens is Alektorophobia.
8. The domestic chicken is descended from the red junglefowl; they can interbreed. They were thought to have been domesticated at least 7,000 years ago, making them one of the oldest domesticated animals. However, it appears they weren't domesticated primarily for meat or Eggs, but as fighting birds.
9. Chickens are omnivores. A wild chicken will scratch for seeds and insects, and they have been known to eat larger creatures such as lizards and young mice.
10. In ancient Greece, they believed that lions were afraid of roosters, and according to folk tales in some parts of Europe, so is the devil, who will flee at the sound of a rooster crowing.