Vitor H. B. Ferreira

Great few days at #ECBB2026 in Cambridge: great talks, great people, and plenty of ideas to bring home 🧠🐔 And, of course, I kept spreading the chicken agenda: they’re not just farm animals, but fascinating models for understanding behavior and cognition.

Already in Cambridge for #ECBB2026! 🐔 Excited to explore the city before the conference kicks off and looking forward to giving the very last talk of the conference on Friday. Hope there’ll still be some people left 😂

🐣🐔 This week marks the start of CADO, an #ANR project I’ve been developing since joining INRAE in 2022. With my team, we collected eggs from chicken breeds selected for production, ornamentation, resilience, plus red junglefowl, the chicken’s wild ancestor. Now we wait for healthy chicks to hatch!

🚨 New paper in my very intentional “How” series! 🐔 How do chickens perceive humans—and why does it matter? Chickens watch us as much as we watch them, and it might help improve their welfare. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7VJKJ...

So happy to be part of this! Probably the most complete review so far on free-range chicken behavior and welfare 🐓. A must-read if you want to see how the field started, where we are now, and what’s next!

Leaving Utrecht after my first #ISAE — what a great experience! Amazing people, science, and even karaoke in front of a passionate crowd of animal behaviour & welfare researchers. And to top it off, my PhD student won Best Poster out of 300! 10/10, would recommend! ☺️ #ISAE2025

@vitorhbf.bsky.social talk at the #isae congress. How do chickens perceive humans ?

🎉 First paper as last author & PhD supervisor! Congrats to Jeanne Seressia and the team 👏 🐤Do more sociable quail sync better? ✅ Yes — those selected for high social motivation often rested together. Social cohesion or social buffering? More studies to come! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our most recent paper is being featured on our institute’s website — in French only! 🐔 www.inrae.fr/actualites/p...

🚨🎉🥳 I’m very happy to announce that after 2 failed attempts (with not-so-great projects 😅), my #ANR JCJC project CADO is funded! More chicken science 🐔 coming. CADO (like gift 🎁 in French) will explore how domestication & selective breeding shaped chicken minds. So excited for what’s coming next.

Les résultats définitifs de l' #ANR 2025 sont censés être annoncés en Juin. #ESR Donc soit aujourd'hui pour bien te pourrir ta fin de semaine soit lundi prochain pour bien te pourrir ton début de semaine 🫣

What are we talking about when we're talking about "cognition"? Terminology in this field has become confused and confusing. While writing our recent review, we tried to structure terms for our own sanity, and provide a template in a Glossary royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

What if chickens are actually paying attention to us? 👀🐔 They recognize individual humans, react to our gaze, voice & gestures, learn by watching us & may even be reassured by our presence 💛. Why does it matter? Find out in our new (preprint) review 👉 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Quail paper? Resubmitted. Literature review of the chicken-human relationship? Submitted. Anxiety? Increasing rapidly as I await news on whether or not my project will be funded. 😱😱😱😱

Three exciting days ahead, with the very best of French research in animal behavior! #SFECA2025

Had a scientific blast in Sweden! First, the PhD defense of now Dr Johanna Gjøen 🎓 Then the Animal Welfare Symposium, where I presented our work on human–chicken interactions 🐔 👨🏻👩🏻 So many great people and conversations. Now taking a few days to enjoy the holidays in beautiful Stockholm 🇸🇪✨

Thanks to the @ecobird.bsky.social team for the warm welcome these past two days! I really enjoyed sharing ideas, learning about their work on chickens and quail, and having great conversations. Hoping for fruitful collaborations in the future! @katywillcox.bsky.social @birgitszabo.bsky.social

Just out! 🐣 Our recent study suggests chickens can see humans as a safe haven. Birds that received gentle handling stayed calmer in stressful situations when a familiar person was present. 💛 #animalbehavior #humananimalrelationship #chickencognition www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our human-chicken relationship paper has just been accepted! 🥳🐓🐥🐣 More to come in the next months ! 🤞🏽

Just submitted a new manuscript on the chicken-human relationship! 🐓Spoiler: Investigating whether humans can act as social buffers for chickens in stressful situations. It’s been a while since my last submission—missed this feeling! Hopefully, more to come on this topic in the future.

Expanding perspectives and understanding relational potential: Are mutually beneficial human-animal relationships compatible with current animal agricultural practices? www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Had a great time at #ASABwinter2024! Bonus points for spending the weekend soaking in the Christmas charm of beautiful Edinburgh 🎄✨ Now back to France to tackle the final week before the holidays. Almost there!

Edinburgh, we are coming! #ASABwinter2024

Want to make beautiful scientific figures? Easy! The NIH released a library of 2000+ free scientific illustrations called *BioArt*. Check it out! bioart.niaid.nih.gov #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky 🧠🟦 🧪

Still finding it hard to reconnect with everyone from Twitter (X) so here’s an attempt at finding all animal behaviourists, ethologists, behavioural ecologists etc, working with animal behaviour. Just pop a comment and I’ll add you to the list - let’s reconnect 😃 #appliedethology go.bsky.app/8oJ3A8E

I wrote (ranted) on experimental design as I was frustrated as an editor at how little guidance students were getting. I underestimated the interest in the issue: it has been downloaded 10,000+ times! Clearly it’s something we need to be talking about more. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....