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Chickens Prefer Attractive People

news.nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#31

Post by pmlnr »

javitury wrote: post #30

This article reminds me of classical history. For Greeks beauty was harmony which they translated to mathematical terms. In the article they only equate beauty and face symmetry. I wonder if chickens or other animals would be attracted to canons of body proportions. Or even to non-natural objects based on the golden ratio for instance. Time to test if the renaissance Vitruvian man was all right!

> face symmetry

One of the most terrifying things was those symmetrialised (is this a word?) faces of celebrities few years ago flooding the web. Completely inhuman look.

Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#32

Post by jaclaz »

tischler wrote: post #27
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If chickens are anything like a neural network (and they kinda have to be at some level, perhaps a more complicated network than what we have in our computers now, but a learning discriminator network nonetheless) - it sounds like they would be reacting on the features which vary the most between male and female faces. They have trained chickens to discern between male and female faces. It would be logical to assume…

I don’t think this is a good explanation. Having played with Poser [0] as a kid a lot, my intuition is that extreme feature parameter settings usually look rather disfigured and unattractive. The chicken brain more likely forms two clusters [1] (one for each sex) and responds more strongly the closer the sensory input is to either of the cluster means. Average faces tend to look attractive, e.g. [2]. Another, related…

Chickens are nice, and usually more intelligent than what most people think, but the "attractive" people choice sounds a bit too much to be plausible. It could be that they like simmetry, but not necessarily a simmetric face is also "attractive".

Anecdotally however my father used to have one that not only recognized us (all people in the family) from a distance, she would also act as a guard dog if anyone else entered the court she lived in.

OT, and probably re-known, however here is the story of Mike, the headless chicken:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#33

Post by [deleted] »

yoz-y wrote: post #26
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If chickens are anything like a neural network (and they kinda have to be at some level, perhaps a more complicated network than what we have in our computers now, but a learning discriminator network nonetheless) - it sounds like they would be reacting on the features which vary the most between male and female faces. They have trained chickens to discern between male and female faces. It would be logical to assume…

A rising trend in many Asian cultures is to consider extremely feminine men as beautiful. In the history the beauty standards have also shifted several times.

[deleted]

Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#34

Post by IncRnd »

notfed wrote: post #12
IncRnd wrote: post #7

I don't see how this text is correct: Typically breeds with white earlobes lay white eggshells, and those with red earlobes lay brown eggshells followed by There are exceptions, like Rhode Island reds, which have red earlobes and brown eggs. As far as I know, white=white and red=brown. It's that follow-on sentence that doesn't make sense; how can restating the same thing be an exception? Is there someone hear with mo…

I agree, it's not an "exception". (Also, it appears that Rhode Island Reds do indeed have red earlobes and browns eggs. [1]). Weirdly, this article links to another article [2] which makes a very similar statement, but instead uses the (valid) exception, "Lamona chickens have red earlobes, but their eggshells are white." [1] http://www.raising-chickens.org/rhode-island-reds.html [2] https://news.nationalgeographic.co…

Thank you!

Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#35

Post by IncRnd »

The_Fox wrote: post #11
IncRnd wrote: post #7

I don't see how this text is correct: Typically breeds with white earlobes lay white eggshells, and those with red earlobes lay brown eggshells followed by There are exceptions, like Rhode Island reds, which have red earlobes and brown eggs. As far as I know, white=white and red=brown. It's that follow-on sentence that doesn't make sense; how can restating the same thing be an exception? Is there someone hear with mo…

I noticed that too. It must be an error in the article.

Thanks!

Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#36

Post by IncRnd »

yorwba wrote: post #14
IncRnd wrote: post #7

I don't see how this text is correct: Typically breeds with white earlobes lay white eggshells, and those with red earlobes lay brown eggshells followed by There are exceptions, like Rhode Island reds, which have red earlobes and brown eggs. As far as I know, white=white and red=brown. It's that follow-on sentence that doesn't make sense; how can restating the same thing be an exception? Is there someone hear with mo…

I found a study on that: http://www.genetics.org/content/genetics/13/6/470.full.pdf Last sentence: "7. There was no evidence of any linkage between the factors for earlobe color and egg color." My guess is that having an association between earlobe color and egg color is convenient for breeders, so they prefer chickens with corresponding colors.

That's a different issue, but thank you.

Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#37

Post by cantrip »

QAPereo wrote: post #10
randomdrake wrote: post #4

Study: Chickens prefer beautiful humans. Citation: Ghirlanda, S., Jansson, L. & Enquist, M. Hum Nat (2002) 13: 383. Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-002-1021-6 DOI: 10.1007/s12110-002-1021-6 Abstract: We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (…

I wonder what aspects of human beauty chickens are perceiving? Purely at a guess, I would say symmetry of features and signs of health/reproductive health. Given that they’re looking st faces, this seems most likely to me.

Symmetry is explicitly mentioned in the original article and the study you're commenting on.

Re: Chickens Prefer Attractive People

#39

Post by ShinTakuya »

tanakian wrote: post #24

This might be because we all are relatives, there was a creature which first had something like an eye, then an eye, and it's our common ancestor, so perception of the relative species is to some extent common. Or may be that's because there is a universal concept of beauty, as Feinman was guessing, but I doubt it.

All an eye does is give optical data to the brain. It's the brain that "decides" to interpret it a particular way. So it's interesting that the brain decides similar qualities (symmetry for instance) are more "interesting".
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