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Sonia Kong is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) and Saturday is her pet chicken.
“She is quite cute. She has yellow feathers and a cute small head,” said Kong. “She’s shy. She’s very sensitive, especially when she’s trying to lay eggs.”
Kong also happens to be conducting an international study with colleague Tracy Wong, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, about how pets affect the social and emotional development of teens across cultures.
They want to better understand how relationships with pets can support healthy development in various cultural settings.
Saturday is 11 months old and named after the day of the week that Kong picked her up from a farm outside Prince George. Kong says she decided to get a chicken as a pet because she had chickens and ducks when she was a child and has loved them ever since.
Saturday provides her with a lot of emotional support, she says, and the two are inseparable. She has even made Saturday a customized diaper so the chicken doesn’t make a mess when she accompanies Kong on her errands around the city.
“Doing research is not always exciting,” said Kong, noting that Saturday will sit on her leg or lay beside her when she is working. Since getting Saturday, Kong says she’s come to realize how intelligent chickens can be.
“I feel like she’s so smart. She can understand my emotions. When I was sad, she just lay there, looking at me, you know, trying to figure out what was going on, ‘Why are you crying?’,” said Kong. “That means a lot to me. I really appreciate that I have a chicken.”
Kong says that in Western cultures pets are highly valued but in many other cultures around the world they are used for specific purposes like protection, pest control or food.
“We want to see whether there are cultural differences and how spending time with pets may influence adolescents in different cultural backgrounds,” she said.
Kong said when her parents found out she had a pet chicken they jokingly asked her if she would be eating it.
“It’s like ‘I will not! She’s a pet.’ They’re kidding but there are cultural differences or cultural value differences.”
The research is being conducted through an online survey where adolescents will be asked questions about their thoughts and feelings related to pets. Kong says they have begun collecting data in Hong Kong and are now trying to find more participants in Canada.
