Listening to poultry
May 18, 2012 - Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia are exploring whether poultry vocalizations could give clues about their health and comfort.
According to an article on Science Daily, welfare of poultry (which is the top agricultural product in the state) is a high priority, and anything that can help producers determine the state of their flock means big business.
"Many poultry professionals swear they can walk into a grow-out house and tell whether a flock is happy or stressed just by listening to the birds vocalize," said Wayne Daley, a Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) principal research scientist who is leading the research.
While there are lots of problems associating ith isolating specific vocalizations amongst a cacophony of noise, results do show that it is possible to gauge how birds are based on nothing but their vocalizations.
For more on this interesting research, read the article on Science Daily.