Technicolour Chickens

Rooster. Photograph, 4 x 6 in. Copyright 2007, Tania Nault.

Apparently, according to an article in The Western Producer (Watts, Jon M. “Chickens have technicolour vision.” August 16th, 2007. p. 69) of all the barnyard animals, chickens are the ones most likely to enjoy art. Well, actually, that’s not what the article said at all. What Watts, an animal behavioural consultant, actually said was that chickens have a large number of cones in their eyes and so are “colour vision experts.”

Here’s a bit of very basic eye anatomy: light passes through the pupil and onto the retina at the back of the eye. The retina has two types of photo-receptors, or light gatherers, rods and cones. Rods collect information about light in very low light conditions and are also sensitive to motion. Nocturnal animals, like cats, have many more rods than do humans, which helps them see very well in low light conditions. Cones, however, need daylight to effectively collect information about colour, and are also responsible for all high resolution vision. Diurnal animals like humans (and chickens) have many cones widely distributed across the retina and therefore have a wider range of vision in daylight than do nocturnal animals. Humans have three kinds of cones: blue sensitive, red sensitive and green sensitive, which makes it very easy for us to see a full spectrum of colours. Dogs, for example, only have red and blue cones, and so cannot see green the same way a human does.

Now, what does all this have to do with chickens appreciating art? Well, according to Watts, chickens not only have cones sensitive to red, green and blue, they have a fourth cone that can capture light in the ultraviolet spectrum, “The world of the chicken therefore probably contains colours that humans can even imagine, let alone see.”

And there you have it. The lowly chicken, art connoisseur.