LANGUAGE OF HENS
The hen has always been rated low in intellectual capacity (perhaps be, cause man has kept her so strictly to tli- mechanical job of laying eggs). It is interesting, says the "Observer," to learn from Dr. David Katz that she has a language of nine words, including the clucking noise, the egg-laying noise (which might be called a paean), the warning noise, and the threatening noise. But she is not the only creature with a systematic vocabulary. An American doctor has even produced a small ourang-outang dictionary, and other -students have distinguished as many as nine horse sounds and fifteen cat ones (domesticated). More might have been expected oX the latter. And it is said that the late Miss Proclor and one of her crocodile charges, at the zoo used to exchange a kind of grunt which seemed at, least '. > imply recognition on both sides.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 68, 20 March 1936, Page 10
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148LANGUAGE OF HENS Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 68, 20 March 1936, Page 10
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