Over the course of domestication animals undergo a set of typical observable morphological changes, such as a shift in body proportions and loss of pigmentation among others (Price, 1999; Jensen, 2017). In addition to this, relative size changes occur in the brain. In domesticated animals, not only is the overall brain size different when compared to their wild counterparts, but specific brain areas may enlarge or shrink independently of one another (Rehkämper et al., 2007). Such specificity in brain changes is indicative of a possible functional change. Additionally, considering that domesticated animals often find themselves in much larger groups than those seen in the wild, at least some of the said functional changes may relate to social life.

The domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a social species that had been living under direct human influence for thousands of years (West & Zhou, 1988; Sawai et al., 2010). It is a highly suitable study subject for a shift in social cognition, firstly, because its ancestral species, the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus gallus), can still be found in the wild today allowing for direct comparisons in testing. Secondly, modern chicken facilities have been highly demanding of social tolerance by keeping unnaturally large flocks. Intense artificial selection of chickens has been focused on improving production traits (Agnvall & Jensen, 2016; Marino, 2017), however other characteristics have likely been unintentionally favoured through gene linkage. Thanks to these linked genes, domestic chickens may have partially adapted to a different social environment. A comparison of performance in a cognitive task that is based on social learning could reveal what differences exist between modern domestic chickens and their wild counterparts.

The main goal of this experiment was to assess whether Red Junglefowl (RJF) and White Leghorn layers (WLs) are able to learn a puzzle-opening task from a demonstrating conspecific and determine if notable differences in social learning exist between the two subspecies. This goal was to be achieved through fulfilling several aims:

1. To assess and compare the abilities of WLs and RJF to pick up information from a conspecific and use that information to solve a puzzle task,
2. To compare the level of motivation to obtain a food reward in birds of both subspecies that observed a conspecific obtain it (“guided”) and birds that did not observe one (“naïve”) through assessing the number of interactions with the puzzle,
3. To detect and compare other effects of the presence or absence of conspecific demonstrations on WLs and RJF by recording general behavioural patterns throughout the duration of the test trial.

I hypothesised that there will be considerable differences between female RJF and WLs in their ability to pick up information from conspecifics.

Agnvall, B., & Jensen, P. (2016). Effects of divergent selection for fear of humans on behaviour in Red Junglefowl. PloS one, 11, e0166075.

Jensen, P. (Ed.). (2017). The Ethology of Domestic Animals: An Introductory Text. 3rd Edition. Cabi, p. 21-23.

Marino, L. (2017). Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken. Animal Cognition, 20, 127-147.

Price, E. O. (1999). Behavioral development in animals undergoing domestication. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 65, 245-271.

Rehkämper, G., Frahm, H. D., & Cnotka, J. (2007). Mosaic evolution and adaptive brain component alteration under domestication seen on the background of evolutionary theory. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 71, 115-126.

Sawai, H., Kim, H. L., Kuno, K., Suzuki, S., Gotoh, H., Takada, M., Takahata, N., Satta, Y., & Akishinonomiya, F. (2010). The origin and genetic variation of domestic chickens with special reference to junglefowls Gallus g. gallus and G. varius. PloS one, 5, e10639.

West, B., & Zhou, B. X. (1988). Did chickens go north? New evidence for domestication. Journal of Archaeological Science, 15, 515-533.