
Grace Hong's MSc Defence
Domestic chicken are bipedal birds that are capable of terrestrial and aerial locomotion. As flapping flight is energetically costly, chickens may use a combination of their hindlimbs and wings to loco-mote; however, little is known about the relationship between the keel bone, the flight muscles that anchor to it and the chickens’ ability to navigate their environment. Therefore, this thesis investigat-ed the effects of feather loss (Chapter 2) and exercise using inclines on flight muscle architecture, keel bone fractures (Chapter 3) and flight kinematics (Chapter 4).