Fun & Interesting Facts about Chickens
Keeping chickens in the backyard has become popular since people in suburban and urban areas appreciate the value of having chickens as they actually make quite lively pets.
Here are ten interesting & fun facts about these feathered friends.
Chickens are omnivores
Most people think chickens only eat veggies but besides eating grass, grain and seeds, they’ll hunt and eat lizards, insects, toads and even small mice.
Chickens can sprint at 14 km/h
Chickens can run 1.6km in around 6 minutes and 40 seconds using a top speed of 14 km/h. This may vary based on the fitness level, breed and disposition of that particular chicken.
Chickens never sweat
Generally, chickens can better adjust to cold weather instead of hot weather. This is because of their feathers. When needed to cool down, chickens will flap their wings or drink water to eliminate some body heat. If overheated they may pant too.
There are more chickens than humans on the planet
At present, there are over 25.9 billion chickens in the globe according to the latest data from the UN. Whereas, there are “just” 7.9 billion humans on the planet as of October 2021.
Chickens don’t have to take baths
Chickens don’t take baths with water and especially not soap. Instead, they bathe with dust. They fluff up the feathers using some dirt and clean their bodies with it. The dust scrubs old skin particles and eliminates oil build-up. All this helps to maintain the feathers clean and fresh. The funny thing is if they don’t find dirt available to bathe then they’ll still go through the entire process. This is similar to taking a bath with no water for humans, can you imagine?
Chickens can identify people
Can chickens identify their hooman friends? Chickens can differentiate and recognize people with dissimilar faces. Besides, they tend to prefer people with good-looking faces. Some features that classify a good-looking face include proportions and symmetry and apparently chickens appreciate that.
Chickens can recognize colours better than us
Similar to many birds, chickens beat us when it comes to how many colours they see. Humans have cones that recognize three colours but chickens come with cones that can recognize five. They live in a very colourful world.
Chickens can barely see at night
In case you ever have to catch a chicken, simply wait till it gets dark. You can walk up to a chicken and grab it since they have a terrible vision at night.
Chicks start pecking at the age of only three days
The behaviour of pecking does not begin until a chick is a minimum of three days of age. When they reach sixteen days they start fighting for pecking.
Chickens are actually dinosaurs
Chickens came from dinosaurs through evolution and they are the nearest living relatives to the great T-Rex. One dinosaur’s lineage continued to exist after the great extinction 65mil years ago, the birds, therefore all birds and as well as chickens, are really dinosaurs. But, chickens are surely most dinosaur-like, if you closely observe them run and make sounds, you can totally see a very unique velociraptor.