Beauty may be in the beholder but it is not quite as subjective as you might think. Let's face it we all know a beautiful person when we see them and we're not the only ones. Researchers in Sweden have shown that chickens are quite capable of distinguishing BPs (beautiful people that is) from the rest of us. (Personally I would have thought that the Green Man's foliate face would have had to been attractive to a chicken but apparently not)

You really know you are getting desparate for a research subject when you start testing chickens for human facial aesthetics I say. Still Stefano Ghirlanda , Liselotte Jansson and Magnus Enquist of Stockholm University obviously thought it was one of those great questions in science that needed an answer. They trained chickens to peck at a photo of the person they thought was most attractive and it seems that the chickens were very good at choosing who looked most attractive. If only they had trained them to pick at the peoples actual faces now that would have had some social justice merit.

Clearly chickens are pretty stupid animals, if you have ever kept some you will know this for a fact. Now I know how much intellect goes into deciding who's beautiful it leads me onto reflecting on the intellect of those in charge of Womens Day, Womens Weekly, Who Weekly (to name but three).

Don't believe that this is actual research? Then click here for the paper.