NHacker Next
login
▲Chicken Eyeglassesen.wikipedia.org
132 points by thomassmith65 4 days ago | 46 comments
Loading comments...
hermitcrab 58 minutes ago [-]
Alternatively, we could treat fellow sentient beings with a bit of empathy and respect and not cram thousands of them into an artificial environment. Then we wouldn't have to cram them full of antibiotics, cut their beaks off and make them wear 'cute' glasses.
jedimastert 29 minutes ago [-]
I love humanely and ethically raised chickens, but let's not pretend they aren't dumb as rocks. The happiest chickens in the world with all the pasture and food in the world will still fight each other for no other reason than "because". Admittedly a lot less but still happens
KetoManx64 55 minutes ago [-]
Don't buy eggs/chickens from companies that treat them like that. Buy from local farms or eggs labeled as pasture raised while grocery shopping. You're not supporting the awful conditions and also getting eggs that have more nutrition content/egg.
goda90 31 minutes ago [-]
Maybe there's a negative I'm not aware of, but I personally look for pasture raised eggs that are certified by this organization: https://certifiedhumane.org/

I can often find them for only $2 more a dozen than the cheapest option.

WD-42 14 hours ago [-]
The fact that this article doesn’t include any images of chickens wearing said goggles is an injustice.
Aloisius 13 hours ago [-]
https://www.lazerhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Cannib...
herval 13 hours ago [-]
Looks cooler than I expected!
FirmwareBurner 6 hours ago [-]
Dope drip. Missing a cigarette and a leather jacket.
heckelson 6 hours ago [-]
this is a dapper looking chicken!
dvh 8 hours ago [-]
I had a theory, long supported by things like astatine, quantum computing or graphene, that if top-right Wikipedia image doesn't contain photo then the subject is either not real or not practical.
wat10000 2 hours ago [-]
Neither “arithmetic” nor “algorithm” have photos.
6 hours ago [-]
MaDeuce 18 hours ago [-]
And contact lenses too. A HBS case study I remember from grad school:

"Optical Distortion, Inc" A new product, contact lenses for chickens, is to be introduced by a small firm formed to market the product. An entry strategy must be planned including price, sales force, size, and location. Allows data for computation of economic benefit to farmers. Includes state-by-state chicken population data for planning a rollout sales program.

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=17120

conradev 16 hours ago [-]
Looks like he actually tried it:

  But some ideas cannot be crushed by bankruptcy and the dream of providing lenses to all of America’s hens was carried on by the son of one of Vision Control Inc.’s founders, a young Mr. Randall Wise. Wise, a Harvard Business school graduate and former nautical shipping consultant, used the millions he made from selling his software company to establish Animalens, Inc.

 Instead of pecking at each other (success!), the hens were now pecking at the air, rubbing their eyes repeatedly on their wings, and suffering from corneal ulcers and ruptured eyes.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/chickens-wore-sunglasses-ind...
wormius 15 hours ago [-]
We owned this game growing up: https://magisterrex.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/the-best-classi...

It has those goggles in it. Still remember fondly to this day (not the game, the chicken goggles).

Aardwolf 8 hours ago [-]
The article talks in the past tense, but doesn't mention what it got replaced with.

Searching for it reveals pink plastic chicken glasses for sale today, so they still seem to exist. Or maybe those are blinders instead

raptorraver 12 hours ago [-]
Nowadays they do the same using red lights in industrial egg production, if pecking becomes a problem in a flock.
FiddlerClamp 2 hours ago [-]
I remember these! A board game I played as a kid in the 1970s, "The Inventors," had chicken eyewear protection as an invention.

Pic available at: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/817261/the-inventors

ortusdux 18 hours ago [-]
A friend had a job in the 70's at a research lab, and one of their duties was to use a hot iron to curl the beaks of each incoming batch of chicks, to help prevent pecking. They called the tasking "giving the chickens lips". I like the glasses solution a bit better.
kylecazar 15 hours ago [-]
Well, I know more about abnormal injurious behavior in birds than I did an hour ago
thomassmith65 4 days ago [-]
I looked this up after hearing about them on ABC's If You're Listening podcast: https://abc.net.au/listen/programs/if-youre-listening/skunk-...
tomcam 10 hours ago [-]
Chickens are hilarious and surprisingly adorable. All plans of eating ours went right out the window when I brought home the first wave of day-old chicks.

They can be very mean to each other. “Pecking order” is literally true and the results can be heartbreaking. Ours have never pecked each other’s eyes, thank heaven, but I’m guessing most of that is from the roosters, not the hens. Roosters can get disgustingly rapey and have to be separated from the hens, who can get seriously injured during the mating process.

natmaka 9 hours ago [-]
I heard from someone who raised chicken that they are way more agressive towards each other when their diet lacks adequate proteins.
eMPee584 8 hours ago [-]
Low Protein intake => low neurotransmitter levels => lower emotional balance / control is a causal chain I've learned about a few years ago from a therapist named Julia Ross who treated thousands of patients with this insight and published three books about it, the most recent one (The craving cure) being a comprehensive practical resource about this phenomenon. It seems to be a major factor in depression, addiction, obesity, and dysfunctional social behaviour.. and little surprise it affects chicken, too.

In my view, we have massive problems (child brain development, social problems) in the world because of protein scarcity, as capitalism excels providing everyone with ample cheap carbs but cheap sustainable protein, not so much. I dream of open source bioreactors for algae (spirulina etc) too boost availability of Protein & Omega 3 (which is another hugely undersupplied nutrient, esp. in non-coastal regions and as appetite for sunflower-fried batter goes up, because Omega 6 cancels out 3).. here in Dresden, we have a small start-up https://algenwerk.de that is trying to commercialize it but the cost really has to be brought down a lot, rn one jar is about 8€ for some green goo that tastes like nothing, but it has potential and they are a talented team.

dillydogg 4 hours ago [-]
I'm no dietitian, but for the "cheap, broadly available protien" I think beans and lentils fit the bill. I do not know if they are sustainable, which you mention as a requirement in your post, but surely plant based is more sustainable than meat.
uncircle 9 hours ago [-]
> Chickens are hilarious and surprisingly adorable.

They are, but also extremely dumb. I always think of Herzog's rant about chickens and their stupidity.

As they are literal dinosaurs, the terrifying aspect of gigantic carnivore sauropods with the "intelligence" of a chicken has never been properly depicted in movies.

dyauspitr 9 hours ago [-]
>disgustingly rapey

This anthromorphization is deeply annoying. What next? Turtles don’t care about age of consent?

rendall 9 hours ago [-]
I was a tourist in Athens once. Adjacent to the Presidential Mansion is the National Garden, quite lovely. At the time it had a miserable little zoo. In one of the cages was a pair of bedraggled hens. Their backs were entirely bare of any feathers. The reason they were bedraggled and bare was because they were locked in with a rooster. That rooster would mount and rut with them every four seconds or so, all day long, every day. It was one of the most cruel and grotesque tableus I've ever seen.
spookie 8 hours ago [-]
That's normal rooster behaviour even when free range. Farmers separate them most of the time.
edm0nd 7 hours ago [-]
nature is cruel.

if you think about it, most animals die fucked up deaths and end up starving, injured, or being torn apart by a predator.

rendall 4 hours ago [-]
That was not nature. That was a human who made the decision to keep those birds penned up together.
bowsamic 9 hours ago [-]
We have indoor rabbits and our boy rabbit often mounts the female one (they are both neutered). What else is there to call it but rape? He mounts her, she rejects it and runs away, he insists, eventually she has enough and they have a fight. It’s basically impossible to not call it rape
quesera 58 minutes ago [-]
It's a loaded word though, with psychological and social implications that far exceed the simple description of the act. Absent the psychology and society, what is it? Obnoxious dominant behavior, maybe.

But in context, is it even obnoxious or is that just humans having opinions again? The hens don't appear to love it, but they don't like being rained on either. And just like being caught in a rainstorm, they shake themselves off, and get on with their day. Is this OK? I don't know, but it's thoroughly normal and necessary for species survival. Hens do not go into heat or have sex drives, so the hen will never initiate or encourage sex. So all chicken mating is nonconsensual. What does consent even mean here? Yet they survive as a (now domesticated) species.

Similarly, is it "murder" when a coyote eats a chicken? Maybe, but only if we're anthropomorphizing. Really it's just predation. It sets off our moral triggers, but it's an essential function of life -- and for that matter, we do it too and rarely feel bad about it.

6 hours ago [-]
mc32 3 hours ago [-]
It’s mating behavior. The don't have the concept of rape. They don’t have peers who punish them for this behavior. It all instinct and nothing else.
bowsamic 1 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter if they have a concept of it, I'm talking about our concept of it, and their behaviour accords to that concept
quesera 47 minutes ago [-]
Zero chickens are aware of human concepts of order.

You might as well rail against clouds for forming, or rain for falling.

7 hours ago [-]
miohtama 9 hours ago [-]
Is the driver of behaviour having too many chickens packed in too small space?
chmod775 8 hours ago [-]
No. Chickens have a tendency to gang up on sick and injured chickens and quite literally peck them to death.

This has been observed long before we started cramming them into tiny spaces, but it certainly doesn't help.

spookie 8 hours ago [-]
As a rural guy can confirm.

Also, the males, become quite agressive past 4 months of age. They also grow sizeable spurs hard as nails, usually these are trimmed if you have more than one rooster. Roosters will attempt to kill chicks occasionally, although they usually do a great job protecting them from predators. They are able to scare foxes sometimes :)

WastedCucumber 17 hours ago [-]
I don't get it though - how does this help prevent pecking? The only reasoning seems to be in the 1911 article, where it suggests they're made to protect the chickens' eyes.
07d5602d5e488e3 17 hours ago [-]
end of the first paragraph

> the coloring was thought to prevent a chicken wearing them from recognizing blood on other chickens, which may increase the tendency for abnormal injurious behavior

Levitating 17 hours ago [-]
> One variety used rose-colored lenses, as the coloring was thought to prevent a chicken wearing them from recognizing blood on other chickens

So that's only relevant tot the rose-colored variant.

I think the answer lies in this quote right above it:

> They differ from blinders in that they allow the bird to see forward, whereas blinders do not.

Where "blinders" is a hyperlink to an article concerning blinders for chickens.

That article has a piece comparing blinders to spectacles:

> Blinders work by reducing the accuracy of pecking at the feathers or body of another bird, rather than spectacles which have coloured lenses and allow the bird to see forwards but alter the perceived colour, particularly of blood.

But this again only refers to the coloured lenses, which in the article was said to be a variant.

So my understanding is that both blinders and spectacles work by restricting the vision of the bird but the spectactles additionally had a rose-colored variant.

bbarnett 15 hours ago [-]
You must have missed this in the wikipedia page, but they're hinged.

So when they look down (which for a chicken means bending their neck), they can see the ground and their feed.

When looking ahead, their vision is obscured and blurry, opaque, so they won't attack or eat other chickens.

(the red is an additional option)

Levitating 7 hours ago [-]
Ah, interesting!
smusamashah 17 hours ago [-]
I can not find pictures of chicken wearing those particular glasses depicted in this Wikipedia article.
CompoundEyes 15 hours ago [-]
This made my day.
neuroelectron 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
thomassmith65 12 hours ago [-]
In this case, the source was a podcast, as I pointed out when I posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44244706
snickerbockers 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]