Under the Henfluence: The delightful science of chickens
When she couldn't find the book on chickens she wanted to read, Tove Danovich wrote Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them. Tove Danovich hide caption
When she couldn't find the book on chickens she wanted to read, Tove Danovich wrote Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them.
Tove DanovichTove Danovich decided to dabble in backyard chicken keeping mainly for the fresh eggs. But after she spent some time with her new chickens and started learning about the different varieties, her hobby grew into an obession.
"They're kind of like Pringles where once you pop and don't stop, you have to keep going. So that's how I wound up with eight currently, but I've had a total of 16 over the years," says Tove.
It may have very well stopped there. But Tove is a journalist.
A recent social media post from Tove shows the morning running of her chickens.
Credit: Tove Danovich
And as she embarked on her new hobby, she also did what most journalists do — read everything there is to find on a subject. Along the way, she found plenty of how-to guides, but what she really wanted to know more about was the science. She wanted to understand chicken evolution and their unique relationship with humans.
"I was wanting this book that increasingly it seemed like it it just didn't exist," remembers Tove. "I wound up writing it instead — which I think is how a lot of books happen."
Tove's new book, Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them, explores the history of humans' relationship with these birds we domesticated around 3500 years ago. She also fills the pages with personal anecdotes from the time she spends with her own chickens, illuminating their smart — and varyingly sweet and sassy — personalities.
A star is born
Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott got to see those personalities on full display in a recent trip to Tove's chicken coop. That's where he met the budding social media influencer Emmylou. She's the star among Tove's many chickens.
Emmylou's stardom comes as no surprise to her chicken keeper.
Chickens played a big role in the history of animal training. In the mid-20th century, famed behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner and some of his graduate students began researching animals — namely pigeons. The initial hope was to train pigeons to drop bombs. That goal never panned out, but the graduate students, Marian and Keller Breland, went on to start their own animal training company, IQ Zoo. During their careers as animal trainers, they worked with the animal feed company Larro Feeds, to do chicken shows. Over the course of the shows, chickens were trained on many tasks ranging from climbing up a slide for food and sliding down repeatedly to even beating humans in tic tac toe.
Tove is delighted and enamored by the varied, complex history and science of chickens. But the greatest lesson of all from her chicks? To slow down.
"Chickens really teach you to relax in a way that other animals don't," she ruminates. Her other pets rely on her, demand things from her regularly. "But the chickens are just busy doing chicken stuff, and I really like sitting in the yard with them and just watching them be be chickens."
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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy, edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact checked by Brit Hanson. Gilly Moon engineered the audio.