Hypnotizing Chickens

Anyone care to explain? I'm guessing the chicken is probably experiencing a release of endorphins from the position it's held in rather than from looking at the line. I don't know. Never tried this but now I'm kinda tempted to try it!

And who the hell even discovered this in the first place?

Well someone had too much time on their hands... lol!

When I was in vet school, some physiologist hypnotized a chicken for us. He didn't really have a good explanation for it, but it was pretty cool to see.

I saw it done at my best friends barn when we were teenagers, about 40yrs ago, yech! Anyway she just sat the chicken down in the alleyway of the barn and started drawing a line in the dirt with finger in front of the hen and after a couple of strokes the chicken just sat and stared at it.
I wonder if maybe it reminds them of a natural enemy the snake? So theyre not going to move until they're sure it's not one. It's a stretch but I don't know, maybe?

I don't know why they do it either, but I've done it. Although my husband said not to do it to peeps because when they did it once, the peep died. Who knows if it dies because of the line or something else though....

Danielle

It's always fascinated me, but I have no insight. I also love how, if you hold their body in your hands and roll it from side to side, their heads stay in the same place xD

Lmao!! I'm laughing so hard right now

Haha, I laughed so hard when I saw the title. I totally used to do this as a kid. I didn't use the line though, never heard of that. I would take two fingers, held up like a peace sign, and slowly move them back and forth in front of the chickens face, and the chicken would sorta glass over and you could do just about anything with it, pick up its wings, move its head, etc. another way was to hold the chicken by the feet, upside down, and gently swing the chicken around in a circle, almost like you were drawing a half dollar sized circle in the dirt with its beak, very gently, and the same thing would happen. Not sure why either of these worked, I just know that they did.

I always do it to my birds if I'm extremely bored!!! Especially during fairs we all get really bored, so we used to hypnotize our birds! I've also used it on chickens thatw ere a bit crazy to calm them down haha.

I'll try to see if I could get some video soon, it really is too much fun.

It has nothing to do with the lines I'm pretty sure. When I had chickens we just held the upside down and they would just.. "flop". We could lay them on the ground and let go and they would just say there. Quite funny actually!