is running your finger down the chicken necessary? Being a Zoology major, I accidentally took an ornithology lab, where I learned that birds never become inverted in their natural environment, and therefore lack the cognitave equipment to deal with being upside-down, and will just lay there.
In practice, this doesn’t always work out, but I have performed this experiment firsthand on a carolina chickadee, so I can vouch that it can work.
's wierdd to see a bird lay all still like that. 
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Is it possible to hypnotize a chicken (01-Oct-1982)
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:rolleyes: When I was a little kid, I spent much time at my friend’s farm. She had 20 or 30 chickens. We would catch them one at a time, put their head under their wing(they promptly went to sleep) and line them up in a row. As one would wake, we would grab it and put it back to sleep, until we had all of them asleep lined up in a row. We thought we hypnotized them.
They would then wake up in a minute or so and walk away.
PurplePersonKevlar, it may be time to transfer to a school with a better zoology department.
“I learned that birds never become inverted in their natural environment, and therefore lack the cognitave equipment to deal with being upside-down, and will just lay there.”
Try telling that to my Mitred Conure who is hanging upside down on her cage by one foot while complaining that I’m ignoring her.
Granted, my Yellow Collar Macaw doesn’t like being upside down, but that is because she has little feet (so she feels insecure). If I hold her upside down she doesn’t just lay there, she grabs onto anything within foot or beak reach.
Poeia
What really interests me is whether chickens (or any lower animal) can be hypnotised in the same way humans can. As we know, the human hypnotic state is the same as a hypnogogic or hypnopompic state – that is, the state between sleeping and waking. Not to cry fowl ;), but birds aren’t wired in the same way and so can’t be said to be truly “hypnotised” by human standards.
But what about non-human mammals – dogs, cows, aardvarks, duck-billed platypuses? Would it be possible to hypnotise them in a manner approaching human hypnosis? Think of the practical uses – the neighbour’s dog, Bloodfang, could be hypnotised so as not to bark through the night. For that matter, what about chimpanzees?
Ah. My mistake. Where I said UPSIDE DOWN, think ON THEIR BACK, 'cause that’s what I ment…
Sorry Kev, it still doesn’t apply to parrots. In general we’re told not to hold them totally prone for too long because it puts unaccustomed pressure on their lungs, but Conures are an exception to even that rule.
For some reason, many Conures (not mine) sleep on their backs. There are stories about new owners, unaware of this behavior, uncovering the cage in the morning and finding their new bird on its back on the floor with its feet in the air. The “corpse” jumps up at the owner’s first shriek.
I suppose all this means that parrots are more evolved than other birds – something I knew already.
The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 12-13 of Cecil Adams’ book «The Straight Dope (1984; reissued 1986, 1998)».