Acoustic research that decodes the meaning behind the sounds chicks make could help improve poultry welfare and lead to better treatments for anxiety and depression in humans.
“A healthy animal is more productive, less susceptible to disease and more profitable. There’s so many benefits on the commercial end, but also on the animal welfare end,” said Kenneth Sufka, professor of psychology and pharmacology, University of Mississippi.
Sufka collaborated with researchers at the University of Plymouth, University of Newcastle and Hartbury College, all in the UK, on the study published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Monitoring for stressed chick calls
The researchers recorded and analyzed the vocalizations of chicks placed either in a box alone or in a box with a mirror, making the birds feel like they were with another bird and less stressed. However, the chick that was alone emitted higher pitched sounds, indicating an anxiety-like state.
The resulting acoustic data provides insights into how the chick’s noises changed with their stress levels, which the commercial poultry industry could use to objectively monitor and evaluate welfare on the farm.
Even better, this research offers a non-invasive way to monitor stress levels in poultry. Other approaches require blood withdrawal to measure a bird’s level of corticosterone, a stress hormone. Ironically, drawing blood to test for the stress hormone can also increase stress levels in poultry.
A better animal model for human depression
Finding a non-invasive approach to measuring stress levels in chickens could also help humans with anxiety and depression.
If the researchers can prove that a potential anxiety or depression drug can reduce anxiety-like or stress behaviors in chickens, they can feel confident about moving the treatment to the next phase of testing.
Everyone benefits
I personally love One Health studies like these because, in the end, everyone wins. This approach assumes an interconnectedness of diseases between people, animals, plants and the environment. For me, it’s exciting that one study could improve poultry welfare and humans disease treatment.
