WHAT THE CHICKEN KNOWS: A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird

By Sy Montgomery

Book Review by Curtis Abraham

In naturalist Sy Montgomery’s recent book, “WHAT THE CHICKEN KNOWS: A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird” we enter into the “Chicken Universe”. Throughout the book, Montgomery expertly weaves her personal experiences of chicken husbandry (a mixture of crushing heartbreak, profound enlightenment and unimaginable joy), and those of her friends and neighbors, with fascinating contemporary scientific discoveries about chicken behavior.

The Chicken Universe is not about the domain of Colonel Harlan Sanders and his secret recipe (Sy is a vegetarian), but a feathery realm of rowdy, roguish roosters (and sisterhood of hens) whose pugnaciousness is surprisingly rewarded with warm hugs, genuine care and unconditional love. care. Yes, that’s right, spare the rod and spoil the fowl. A training method practiced by Montgomery’s neighbor Ashley Naglie.

Montgomery was flabbergasted to say the least. She and husband, the author Howard Mansfield, have been keeping chickens for over three decades (they started off with a flock of black hens that they kept on their newly acquired 150 year old farmhouse), but this training style had never occurred to them. Understandably, the pointy beaks and sharp talons was definitely not an incentive for intimacy between oneself and an enraged cock.

Naglie further observed that a rooster’s apparent hostile behavior has been largely misunderstood. An angry bird about to pounce is simply trying to show his affection towards you. A dancing rooster in close proximity only wants to be picked up by its caretaker. These birds, Naglie discovered, are capable of showing generosity by bringing gifts of rocks and shiny objects, which demands acknowledgement and appreciation again by hoisting them in your arms.

Roosters have entered into the lore and annals of human religious thought. According to Montgomery, the Talmud praises the rooster and its authors advise Jews to emulate the bird’s kindness towards their partners because not only are they lookout for predators that might endanger the flock, but they also searching for scrumptious morsels for his hens, and will only partake when the flock has had its share.

“In the sacred book the Hadith, the prophet Muhammad tells us why roosters crow: they do

so because they have seen an angel. The moment a cock crows, the holy man advises, is a good time to ask for God’s blessing.”

Chickens have been living with us humans probably as far back as eight thousand years. An estimated 350 different varieties of this popular bird have been engineered by human hands.But our relationship with poultry has largely been that of the consumer and the consumed. There are four chickens for every human Montgomery tells readers, and

“The average American eats more than one hundred pounds of chicken per year, according to the National Chicken Council, making it the most popular meat consumed in the United States.”

Unfortunately, most people’s impressions of chickens are similar to those of a man Montgomery sat next to on a flight one day: that they are stupid, disgusting, filthy, cowardly, and occasionally cannibalistic automatons.

Many see them as a nuisance, especially the loud crowing of roosters (there are ordinances in some US towns against the noise of crowing cocks.) Folks who adopt baby chicks during the Easter holidays are oblivious to the fact that some of them will grow to be roosters.

But chickens are part of the Order Galliformes (game birds) that includes turkeys, quails and Guinea fowls; hatchlings of this group literally hit the ground running not long after they exit the egg. They are able to walk and even run just hours after hatching. Undoubtedly, part of nature’s adaptation for vulnerable land-dwelling, egg-laying birds to avoid being eaten by predators (not only we humans savor the taste of chicken).

The Red junglefowl, ancestor of modern chickens

The book provides readers with insight into some of the recent researchers investigating the psyche of our feathered friends. For example, some experts argue that these birds, descendants of dinosaurs, exhibit some measure of self-awareness. A 2023 study by Sonja Hillemacher of the University of Bonn confirmed that roosters recognize their own reflections in mirrors; though such experiments remain controversial. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0291416

Young chickens also excel at spatial learning. Spatial learning is the ability to understand, remember, and navigate relationships between objects, spaces, and environments. Days old chicks have been trained by scientists to find hidden food using both far away and nearby landmarks as cues. Two weeks old chicks with only one week’s training were able to find food hidden in the middle of their cage. Furthermore, in the absence of any notable landmarks, chicks have the ability to correctly calculate the middle of any given environment. Additionally, the center of any given environment, irrespective of its geometric shape and unfamiliarity, can be calculated by these baby chickens http://doi.org/10.1007/s003590050073

Chickens have both a sense of nostalgia and visions of the future according to studies such as the one that was conducted by Silsoe Research Institute biologist Siobhan Abeyesinghe https://silsoeresearch.org.uk/animal-welfare/siobhan/scarticle.pdf

Researchers have documented that an average chicken can recognize and remember more than one hundred other chickens. Facial features appear to be the main factor according to experts "Visual Patterns in the Recognition of Individuals among Chickens" by A. M. Guhl and L. L. Ortman

To birds like chickens that live in flocks with social systems, identification of individual birds is important. Chickens are not only aware of their positions within the group, but also the status of others; while dominance is less about bullying and more about peacekeeping among the flock. Social relationships, as researchers have discovered, are present even in flocks of captive red jungle fowl, the direct ancestor of all modern chickens.

Readers are also introduced to the science of ethology, the modern study of animal behavior and the pioneering work of Nobel Prize-winners Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen (Otto von Frisch was also among the ethology laurates). Lorenz identified the process of imprinting, a unique combination of instinct and learning whereby newly hatched game birds including chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese tend to follow the first moving object they see including humans.

Tinbergen investigated, among other avian phenomena, the mystery of a chicken’s propensity to attack and kill a bleeding flock-mate or even pecking itself to death because of an open wound. In fact, the sight of anything red appears to trigger some ancient instinct towards violence of red objects in its immediate environment.

Some fowls have even attained national fame. Take the case of Mike, the headless chicken. Mike survived his owner’s botched ax-wheeling attempt at making his neck into a chicken soup meal for his mother-in-Law. With an intact brain stem, carotid artery and one ear, Mike participated in the sideshow circuit from 1945 to 1947. To commemorate Mike’s extraordinary life, his home town of Fruita, Colorado organizes the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival the third weekend in May each year.

Sadly, Montgomery was unable to sustain her flock of ladies over the years. She would have to reconcile with nature’s overwhelming force for regeneration and rejuvenation. Over a generation ago, New Hampshire’s ecosystem started recovering from centuries of decimation of its predators by farmers and trappers. But with a considerable decline of hunters and trappers and protective laws came the growth of forests and an increase in populations of coyote-wolf hybrids, foxes, weasels, minks, ermines, skunks, hawks, bobcats and even bears.

The recent Covid-19 pandemic, suspected to have originated in wildlife, have affected animals of all varieties directly and indirectly. In 2020, for example, 17 million mink were slaughtered in Denmark after it was discovered that they were infected with a mutant strain of the virus. But during the lockdowns, pet owners reported that their animals kept them from experiencing loneliness, which kept them in good mental health. But after the Covid-19 lockdowns, many of our avian friends were abandoned including pet hens and roosters.

At the end of the book I wanted more. I didn’t want the story to end there. I felt that I had only sampled a scrumptious appetizer of a narrative and that the very best of the main course was yet to come (apologies for the unintended food analogies). I truly hope Sy Montgomery will return to the theme of our familiar feathered friends in the foreseeable future.

Sy Montgomery’s latest book, “The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle” with illustrations by Matt Patterson was published on 9th September 2025