14 DAY TRIAL // A thee-year study set to be carried out by scientists led by researchers at the Bournemouth University in the UK has high chances to win an Ig Nobel Prize at some point in the future. This is because this study is to focus on analyzing how humans have been interacting with chickens over the past 8,000 years.
The researchers who proposed this study argue that, although largely ignored and taken for granted, chickens have always played an important part in the development of human society.
Presently, attitudes towards them greatly vary, meaning that some prefer keeping them as pets, whereas others would much rather see them lying on a plate, surrounded by veggies and drenched in gravy.
Therefore, learning more about these birds can only lead to a better understanding of mankind.
“What we uncover about chickens may lead us to find out more of a wider history about the people keeping them,” project leader Mark Maltby says, as cited by Daily Mail.
Investigations into this utterly fascinating topic are scheduled to debut in next year's January. The study will be a fairly complex one, hence the fact that it will involve archaeologists, geneticists, anthropologists and PhD students.
Some of the latter will have the unique opportunity to journey to Cuba and Ethiopia in order to collect information concerning how people in this part of the world relate to and interact with chickens living close to their homes.
By the looks of it, the Arts and Humanities Researcher Council in the UK has agreed to finance this project. Specifically, the Bournemouth University researchers and their collaborators have been offered a ₤2 million ($3.21 /€2.37 million) grant.
As was to be expected, this caused quite an uproar among ordinary folks who are having trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that the interactions between people and chicken over the past 8,000 years are something worth researching.
“This is frankly an absurd sum of money to spend on what appears to be a ridiculous study. Given the limited budget and important challenges facing the UK, research like this should be way down the pecking order for taxpayer-funded grants,” argues Robert Oxley, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.