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It's commonly said that if you hold a chicken's beak to the ground and draw a straight line in front of it, it will stare at the line and not move. There's no shortage of footage on youtube to prove that it does seem to work. But have any scientific studies been done to verify and/or explain the effect? Could it just be that gently holding a chicken's head to the ground is what causes the effect, and the line is irrelevant? I've tried looking through places like Wiley with keywords like "chicken hypnosis" but I really have no idea how to find this kind of literature.

Jack M
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  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an explanation to the phenomenon, which you accept as real (you bring the proof in the question), you just want an explanation. This is off topic here, but appropriate at Bio.SE – SIMEL Sep 21 '14 at 13:51
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    @IlyaMelamed I don't quite accept it as real. I accept that pinning a chicken to the ground and drawing a line probably does hypnotize it, but I don't know if the line is really the cause. – Jack M Sep 21 '14 at 14:42
  • Your question is "why does the chicken in the video stops moving", not "does the chiken stops moving" that question fits biology.se, not here. – SIMEL Sep 21 '14 at 14:44
  • @IlyaMelamed I can see it's borderline. This is my first post here so I'll let the community decide if they want to migrate it or not. – Jack M Sep 21 '14 at 21:59
  • There are links to three studies on this from the Wikipedia page 'Chicken Hypnotism'. Posting a comment rather than an answer because I haven't read the study, and as Ilya says this might be off topic for Skeptics. – bdsl Sep 22 '14 at 13:24

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