Co-Organizing CIFAR Discovery Workshop on Digital Livestock Intelligence
The CBC documentary Cluck! Chickens Exposed featured the MooAnalytica group’s research using artificial intelligence to analyze chicken vocalizations and behaviour. The segment highlighted how AI, bioacoustics, and sensing technologies can help decode what chickens may be communicating about contentment, discomfort, frustration, fear, and social recognition. Directors Jeff Morales and Bryan Sullivan spent two full days with the team at Dalhousie’s Atlantic Poultry Research Centre and associated farms in 2025. Graduate researchers Yashan Dhaliwal, Mayuri Kate, and Venkatraman Manikandan were featured alongside Dr. Suresh Neethirajan. The research contribution formed a central part of the documentary’s science narrative, showing how rigorous on-farm research can support better poultry welfare and more evidence-based farming decisions. Dr. Neethirajan appears around the 33:37 mark in the documentary, describing how instrumentation and sensor technologies can help unravel chicken communication.