Meet Lacey, the world's smartest chicken who can identify letters and numbers

Lacey, a pet hen from Gabriola Island in Canada, has set a new Guinness World Record by identifying different numbers, colors, and letters. The hyline chicken set the Guinness World Record by correctly identifying 6 letters, numbers, and colors, the most identifications by a chicken in one minute.

Chickens are smart

Lacey's owner, Emily Carrington, who works as a veterinarian in British Columbia, said she wanted to show just how smart chickens are. Carrington said she started training five hyline chickens last year to identify magnetic letters and numbers.

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The Thinking Chicken

"I was training them to do tricks and I thought it would be fun to try for a record because I've been doing a lot of training," she said.

How the chickens were trained

Carrington started by using fridge magnets to teach them that if they pecked the specific magnet, they would get a treat, usually in the form of grain. Initially, the hens were confused at being offered alphabetized shapes, staring cluelessly, but over time they figured out that if those specific shapes were pecked, it yielded rewards. As they learned to identify one shape, which usually took a day or two, Carrington would add a different one.

"Their job was to only peck the number or letter that I taught them to peck and ignore the other ones. Even if I add a whole bunch of other letters that aren't the letter they are supposed to peck, they will just peck the letter that I trained them to peck," she said.

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The Thinking Chicken

Guinness World Record?

For the record attempt, all of Carrington's hens took part, and Lacey emerged the winner, identifying six of them correctly within a minute.

"The chicken is a very underestimated animal and I think if you could stop to think the chicken is a smart animal ... you could maybe look at other animals and think 'Maybe they're smarter than I thought,'" she said.

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