chook speech

Chicken talk review
680 words.
About five minutes.

Mr Toastmaster, fellow members and guests
Buck buck buck
Buck buck buck
Buck buck buck-aw, buck-aw
Buck buck buck-aw
For those of you who don't speak chicken, please allow me to translate.
What I just said was: look out there's a predator like a fox or a badger over there and it looks like it's coming this way.
I know this because I've recently visited the website of Australia's own Dr Doolittle, an academic from Macquarie University by the name of Dr Chris Evans.
Evans has spent the past two decades decoding the communications secrets of animals from chickens to lizards. His amazing research shows chickens in particular have a rich arrray of word-like noises and are even capable of lying.
In my review tonight I'd like to tell you tonight a little about his website: http://galliform.bhs.mq.edu.au/.
People who have cats and dogs might assume that their barking and howling and miaowing are a language of sorts.
In fact, scientists believe in the case of most animals, the noises they make are simply a reflection of their emotional state.
A cat can caterwaul and miaow to express that it's hungry, or in pain or happy or wants to mate.
But it can't use true language to describe objects it sees: table, chair, intelligent and good-looking toastmasters group.
However, we are learning that a select group of animals can.
Reseachers in various universities around the world have proved social animals, like chimps and monkeys, can use basic words.
Various monkey species have different calls to describe different predators. One call might describe a snake. Another a hawk. Another a jaguar.
Dolphins and meerkats - those cute african mammals - have shown similar ability.
In the 1990s Evans, for reasons best known to himself, had a feeling that chickens may have similar skills.
He conducted a range of experiments to test for language ability.
Chickens were placed in cages and shown a range of stimuli, sometimes by themselves, sometimes in the presence of other chickens.
Sometimes they were shown predators. Sometimes they were given food.
Evans concluded the birds had different ''words'' for different predators.
When they were shown a video of an aerial predator they emitted a high pitched keening noise. They made the noise only when other birds were around to hear.
You can go to the website and listen to it, but it sounds a little like this:
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeee
When the chooks were shown a video of a ground predator they made a totally different noise - or word if you like.
It's also on the website and sounds like:
buck buck buck-aw
Evans also found the chooks had the ability to lie. And liars were eventually found out.
Male chickens make a chirp chirp chirp noise when they find food. The noise attracts females and this gives the males an opportunity to mate.
Evans found some males lied about finding food so they could mate with females. But the ploy worked only a limited number of times before the hens smelled a rat.
It's fascinating stuff and shows language-like ability in an animal whose evolutionary course is greatly different from man's.
Evans points out his results did not please everyone.
A colleague of his kept chickens as a boy in the country and assumed the hens were greeting him when he went out to feed them each day.
When he heard of Evans' results he realised the chooks were in fact saying: ''ground predator! ground predator!"
Evans still has plenty of work to get on with. Of 20 identified chicken sounds, he has only decoded three or four. He believes some of the others may refer to the chicken's emotional state, but others could again be refering to actual objects in the world.
Evans' website has recordings and graphs of the different calls, videos of the chooks making them and other information.
You don't have to be a scientist to enjoy listening to the calls and trying to become an amateur chicken linguist.
Finally: buck-aw buck-aw buck buck.
That's chicken for thanks for listening.