Listening to Chickens

May-19-12 A team from Georgia Tech is hoping to promote happier chickens by developing a system that analyzes chicken sounds.

While farmers have long believed chicken contentment can be measured by clucking, the research team hopes to develop a deeper understanding by measuring the change in vocalizations that occurs when the birds are exposed to variety of mildly stressful elements. The team was able to identify the changes in the birds' sounds as they were exposed to different stressors, and also developed a signal-processing algorithm that allowed the sounds to be heard over the loud fans in the barn.

The team hopes that eventually their findings will lead to a real-time automated system able to respond to the birds' feedback by adjusting the barn controls.

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[GIZMAG.COM]

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