Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Photo: a chicken from a farm in California wearing glasses with red lenses.

The humans who put glasses on the chicken do not want it to see more clearly, nor do they want to dress it up, let alone make westerns.

So, what on earth is the intention of mankind?

In daily chicken farms that kill each other, it is never uncommon for chickens to die abnormally before going out of the pen.

Pecking each other is their daily activity, pecking feathers and eyes, all of which can lead to the death of the victims and lead to cannibalism from time to time.

As for why chicks hurt their peers, there may be many reasons. First of all, the overcrowded henhouse, adequate living space for each chicken is very important, lack of space will increase competition, leading to mutual attacks between chickens. In addition, the ambient temperature is too high, too much light, lack of nutrition and other factors, may also contribute to chicken aggression.

Picture of the crowded chicken coop Source: sentient media, but that's not the hardest part. Instead, when a chicken was injured, other companions found it bleeding and rushed to attack the chicken, hastening its death.

In order to prevent violence in chicken flocks, avoid cannibalism, and eventually increase the yield of chicken farms, human beings have used their brains.

In 1902, Andrew Jackson II (Andrew Jackson Jr.) from Tennessee developed a "chicken eye protector" (Eye-Protector for Chickens) and patented it.

Chicken glasses Patent Photo Source: if the Andrew Jackson Jr is not much different in size, the "chicken eye protector" is not very different from human glasses, with two elliptical lenses, a nose rest, and a belt or chain that extends to the back of the head. Jackson's idea was simple: put glasses on the chickens so that their eyes would not be pecked out by their companions.

In the following year, the patent application passed smoothly. But Jackson probably wouldn't have thought at that time that glasses could protect much more than his eyes.

In 1939, poultry manufacturer National Band & Tag Company ("NB" for short) stood on the shoulders of its predecessors and released a new type of chicken glasses. Perhaps the most obvious difference from the past is the use of red plastic lenses.

Red Chicken glasses Photo: National Band & Tag Co. The chicken with glasses will be a red scene directly in front of it. As mentioned above, when a companion bleeds, the chicken is easy to hurt the partner with blood on his body. The task of the red lens is to make the chicks "color blind", unable to tell where the blood is, and reduce their hit rate of hurting each other.

In other words, the object protected by the glasses this time is no longer the chicken that wears it, but other chicks.

Photo Source: Chickens in my garden, however, the glasses did not completely turn the world in the chicken's eyes red. Chicken eyes are long on the side, and although the eyes cannot move as freely as humans and cannot look in different directions, they still have a combined visual field of about 300 °, which is wider than the 210 °of humans.

Therefore, even if the chicken wears glasses, only the front of the field of vision is occupied by red, and the place reached by the "afterlight" is still the original color of the object.

More importantly, the lens is not fixed, but the top is suspended on the frame and swings flexibly with the movement of the chicken. When the chick bows its head to eat and the lenses are placed outward, the millet or worm in the chick's eyes will not turn red; when the chick raises its head and shows aggressiveness, the lenses are put back in front of it and begin to work.

Lenses wobble Photo Source: chicken glasses have become more and more popular since then. In 1955, a salesman participated in the CBS TV entertainment show What's My Line. The program is about guessing careers, and when he revealed the answer, he said that his agricultural equipment company had sold more than 2 million pairs of chicken glasses.

But the glory of chicken glasses did not last all the time, and it is difficult to buy them on the market today. The model chicken at the beginning of this article is wearing the same red glasses produced by NB many years ago. In 2011, the production team of Reality Show's "Storage Wars" found the pair on a California farm that had been discontinued for years and became a rare treasure as an once-star product.

We are not sure why chicken glasses were eliminated. However, there is no data to show that glasses really reduce the mortality rate of chickens.

What else can you wear without glasses? there is another kind of protective equipment that continues to this day instead of chicken glasses, that is, chicken goggles.

1935 Chicken Eye Patent Picture Source: US2079107A the earliest chicken goggle patent appeared in 1935. To put it simply, by replacing transparent lenses with opaque plastic sheets, you can turn glasses into goggles. Tinted glasses filter out some colors directly in front of the field of vision, and the blindfold covers the line of sight directly in front of you.

Nowadays, the chicken eye mask commonly used by chicken farmers is also called "needle-free peeping device (pinless peeper)".

Photo Source: mathrubhumi prefers the word "peep" to "blinder". After all, the line of sight straight ahead was blocked, and the chicken could only scan the world with afterlight and passively became a voyeur.

As for "no needle", the corresponding is "with needle". Including NB's red glasses and many devices worn on chicken eyes, it is always necessary to wear a thin stick through the chicken's nostrils in order to put the device on the chicken's beak. Such a setting is likely to bring a painful experience to the chicken. On the other hand, the needle-free speculum can be clipped directly to the nose, eliminating the need to pierce the nostril.

Pictures of humans with nostrils inserted. Source: medivisuals inc. In addition, the "needle-free speculum" has an important advantage, that is, the low price (about 0.1 yuan each), so that human beings can use a very small cost to ensure the peace of the chicken flock.

When you see you here, you will probably no longer doubt that wearing eyes or eye patches on chickens is just to help them live longer, not to help them see clearly.

But you may also wonder: why do chicken glasses and goggles start directly in front of the chicken's line of sight instead of blocking the side?

I can't see how far the distance is. As mentioned above, the vision of a chicken is 300 °, which is much wider than that of a human. But it also means that the range that the two eyes of the chicken can see together is very small, only about 30 °(see the area surrounded by the green line below).

The black spot surrounded by the green line is the area where the chicken's visual field coincides. Maggie J. Watson, by contrast, the human visual field is narrow, but the overlap of the visual field is about 120 °. In this part, although the left eye and the right eye capture the same object, but because of different angles, the picture is still slightly different. The brain determines how far an object is from the eye by integrating two different images.

Therefore, the ability of chicks to perceive distance is not as strong as that of humans, and the world they see is not as three-dimensional as in the eyes of humans.

They feel the distance between their companions and themselves, depending on the narrow range of about 30 °in front of the field of vision. When there is interference straight ahead, it is more difficult for the chicken to judge the distance of its companions and to attack accurately. To reduce the hit rate is also to ensure the safety of the flock.

At least, the chicken wearing glasses is not because you love to learn, you have a reason to continue to lie down.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids). Author: chocolate Chestnut.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.