Return of the chick sexers . . . - Cultural Cognition of Health

A repeat, but one that warrants repeating at this time of year . . . .

Okay, here’s a set of reflections that seem topical as another school year begins.

The reflections can be structured with reference to a question:

What’s the difference between a lawyer and a chick sexer?

It’s not easy, at first, to figure out what they have in common.  But once one does, the risk that one won’t see what distinguishes them is much bigger, in actuarial and consequential terms.

I tell people about the link between them all the time—and they chuckle.  But in fact, I spend hours and hours and hours per semester eviscerating comprehension of the critical distinction between them in people who are filled with immense intelligence and ambition, and who are destined to occupy positions of authority in our society.

Anyway, the chick sexer is the honey badger of cognitive psychology: relentlessly fascinating, and adorable. But because cognitive psychology doesn’t have nearly as big a presence on Youtube as do amusing voice-overs of National Geographic wildlife videos, the chick sexer is a lot less famous.

So likely you haven’t heard of him or her.

But in fact the chick sexer plays a vital role in the poultry industry. It’s his or her responsibility to separate the baby chicks, moments after birth, on the basis of gender.

The females are more valuable, at least from the point of view of the industry. They lay eggs.  They are also plumper and juicier, if one wants to eat them. Moreover, the stringy scrawny males, in addition to being not good for much, are ill-tempered & peck at the females, steal their food, & otherwise torment them.

So the poultry industry basically just gets rid of the males (or the vast majority of them; a few are kept on and lead a privileged existence) at soonest opportunity—minutes after birth.

The little newborn hatchlings come flying (not literally; chickens can’t fly at any age) down a roomful of conveyor belts, 100’s per minute. Each belt is manned (personed) by a chick sexer, who deftly plucks (as in grabs; no feathers at this point) each chick off the belt, quickly turns him/her over, and in a split second determines the creature’s gender, tossing the males over his or her shoulder into a “disposal bin” and gently setting the females back down to proceed on their way.

They do this unerringly—or almost unerringly (99.99% accuracy or whatever).

Which is astonishing. Because there’s no discernable difference, or at least one that anyone can confidently articulate, in the relevant anatomical portions of the minutes-old chicks.

You can ask the chick sexer how he or she can tell the difference.  Many will tell you some story about how a bead of sweat forms involuntarily on the male chick beak, or how he tries to distract you by asking for the time of day or for a cigarette, or how the female will hold one’s gaze for a moment longer or whatever.

This is all bull/chickenshit. Or technically speaking, “confabulation.”

Indeed, the more self-aware and honest members of the profession just shrug their shoulders when asked what it is that they are looking for when they turn the newborn chicks upside down & splay their little legs.

But while we don’t know what exactly chicksexers are seeing, we do know how they come to possess their proficiency in distinguishing male from female chicks: by being trained by a chick-sexing grandmaster.

For hours a day, for weeks on end, the grandmaster drills the aspiring chick sexers with slides—“male,” “female,” “male,” “male,” “female,” “male,” “female,” “female”—until they finally acquire the same power of discernment as the grandmaster, who likewise is unable to give a genuine account of what that skill consists in.

This is a true story (essentially).