Why do roosters crow when they get up in the morning? Did the chicken wake the sun or did the sun wake the chicken?

In fact, there are two ways to interpret this question. We can study the meaning of rooster crowing and what we want to achieve. Or why do roosters choose to crow in the morning instead of other times of the day?

Howling "what"

If we want to say that the motivation of rooster crowing behavior is actually no different from that of dogs peeing in the garden. They are all announcing to the outside world that they have control over this land (relative to other cocks, of course).

Through observation, ornithologists found that when there are more than two cocks in the henhouse, the rooster with higher status has the priority to crow, and other cocks with lower status have to wait patiently for the most powerful rooster to crow before they go with them, even if they wake up earlier.

Not only the right to crow, but also when eating. Roosters with higher status also have higher mating rights. Judging from this performance, there is no special difference between chickens and wolves. If a young rooster wants to get a higher position, he must challenge the rooster who is taller than him, so fierce fights often break out between roosters.

According to research, as early as 2800 years ago, our people began to take cockfighting as their daily entertainment, and Liezi recorded that "Ji is to raise cockfighting" (it must be said that compared with the slave Colosseum in ancient China, cockfighting and cricket fighting, which people loved, were really much milder).

Of course, if cock crows mean cock crows, they don't just crow in the morning. The sound of cars, people's footsteps, or some sudden movements in the natural environment will cause the rooster to crow. Therefore, under normal circumstances, this kind of cry may also have the function of warning similar people to pay attention to environmental dangers.

Why does it crow in the morning?

With the process of urbanization, many young people in the new generation have never seen a rooster crow, but everyone must have heard a similar joke-the rooster thinks that if he doesn't crow, the sun will not rise.

Usually, the rooster will start crowing two hours before sunrise. So scientists have always wanted to know, does the rooster judge the arrival of the morning by the sky turning white, or does it have a "timing device" inside its body?

The final answer to this seemingly simple question was not announced early. 20 13 The research team of Nagoya University in Japan made a detailed exploration. Through comparative experiments, they finally revealed the truth that cock crows determine time.

Before this, people tend to think that roosters judge whether the morning is coming by the intensity of light, because the lights passing through chicken farms at night will also cause roosters to crow. But as I said above, abnormal conditions during the day can also cause roosters to be nervous, which may have nothing to do with the upcoming crowing in the morning.

In the experiment, several cocks were divided into two groups. They are first taken to a new environment to be familiar with for a period of time, and then treated differently.

One group will stay in the dark environment with the lights on for 12 hours, that is to say, the experimenter tampered with the concept of "morning" through artificial adjustment, which is different from the twilight in the morning in nature. There is no warning when turning on or off the lights, that is to say, if you want to tell the time in advance in this environment, you need to have the ability to perceive the passage of time.

So what's the result? The rooster did a good job! They soon get used to the upside-down morning and crow for two hours before turning on the light. Relatively speaking, roosters have a good grasp of time, and their biological clocks are indeed more accurate than humans.

What about the other group? The researchers completely cut off the light source. These cocks stayed in an opaque environment for 24 hours. They want to know whether the chicken's biological clock can still work normally without the guidance of light.

Unexpectedly, these chickens quickly adapted to the dark environment. What's even more amazing is that without any clues, the crowing time of these cocks is completely synchronized with the outside world. Every morning, the invisible little alarm clock rings in the chickens' brains, and they begin to sing collectively.

The human biological clock is fragile. Without light, there is no direction.

So if so, which condition has higher priority? We already know that the biological clock in the cock can be adjusted by artificially changing the time period, and we also know that the biological clock can run by itself without light. So the researcher decided to suddenly turn on the light at random time to stimulate the rooster, and the result was very interesting. Although the cock crows every time the light is turned on, it is obviously just a riot, because the cock crows louder and longer in the early hours of the morning, more like what we call morning crowing.

At this point, the secret of rooster crowing has been solved-the weight of biological clock is higher, light can adjust the overall rhythm of biological clock, but it has no ability to disturb it.