http://www.peta.org/feat/hiddenlives/
Chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals and are
thought to be as intelligent as mammals like cats and dogs and even
primates. When in natural surroundings, not on factory farms, they form
friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another, love their
young, and enjoy a full life, dust-bathing, making nests, roosting in
trees, and more.
Up until a few years ago, few scientists had spent any
time learning about chickens� intelligence, but people who run farmed
animal sanctuaries have had plenty to say about the subtleties of the
chicken world. It may seem odd, since we don�t know chickens very well,
but it�s true that some chickens like classic rock, while others like
classical music; some chickens enjoy human company, while others are
standoffish, shy, or even a bit aggressive. Just like dogs, cats, and
humans, each chicken is an individual with a distinct personality. Now,
scientists are beginning to learn a bit more about chickens, and here�s
what a few of them have to say:
� Chickens are as smart as small human children,
according to animal behaviorist Dr. Chris Evans, who runs the animal
behavior lab at Macquarie University in Australia and lectures on his
work with chickens. He explains that, for example, chickens are able to
understand that recently hidden objects still exist, which is actually
beyond the capacity of small children. Discussing chickens� various
capacities, he says, �As a trick at conferences I sometimes list these
attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people thing I�m talking
about monkeys.�
� Dr. Joy Mench, professor and director of the Center
for Animal Welfare at the University of California at Davis explains,
�Chickens show sophisticated social behavior. � That�s what a pecking
order is all about. They can recognize more than a hundred other
chickens and remember them. They have more than thirty types of
vocalizations.�
� In her book The Development of Brain and Behaviour in
the Chicken, Dr. Lesley Rogers, a professor of neuroscience and animal
behavior, concludes that chickens have cognitive capabilities equivalent
to mammals.
� Dr. Christine Nicol of the University of Bristol
explains, �Chickens have shown us they can do things people didn�t think
they could do. There are hidden depths to chickens, definitely.�
A Few Examples of Chicken Capabilities
� The video �Let�s Ask the Animals,� produced by the
Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour in the United Kingdom,
shows chickens learning which bowls contain food by watching television,
learning to peck a button three times in order to obtain food, and
learning how to navigate a complex obstacle course in order to get to a
nesting box.
� In 2002, the PBS documentary The Natural History of
the Chicken revealed that �chickens love to watch television and have
vision similar to humans. They also seem to enjoy all forms of music,
especially classical.�
� Chickens are able to learn by watching the mistakes of
others and are very adept at teaching and learning.
� Chickens also can learn to use switches and levers to
change the temperature in their surroundings and to open doors to
feeding areas.
� Chickens have more than 30 distinct cries to
communicate to one another, including separate alarm calls depending on
whether a predator is traveling by land or sea.
� A mother hen will turn her eggs as many as five times
an hour and cluck to her unborn chicks, who will chirp back to her and
to one another from within their shells!
� Chickens navigate by the sun.
� A hen will often go without food and water, if
necessary, just to have a private nest in which to lay her eggs.
� Like us, chickens form strong family ties and mourn
when they lose a loved one.
� Kim Sturla, who runs Animal Place, a sanctuary for
abused and discarded farmed animals, has seen chickens empathize and
show affection for one another. She recalls an endearing story about two
elderly chickens who had been rescued from a city dump. �Mary� and
�Notorious Boy� bonded and would roost on a picnic table together. One
stormy night when the rain was really pelting down, Sturla went to put
Mary and Notorious Boy in the barn and saw that �the rooster had his
wing extended over the hen protecting her.�
Save the Chickens
Chickens raised for food in the U.S. are denied all their natural
behaviors and desires. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into
sheds that stink of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste; they are given
barely enough room even to move (each bird lives in the amount of space
equivalent to a standard sheet of paper). They routinely suffer broken
bones from being bred to be top heavy, from callous handling (workers
roughly grab birds by their legs and stuff them into crates) and from
being shackled upside-down at slaughterhouses.
Chickens are often still fully conscious when their
throats are slit or when they are dumped into tanks of scalding hot
water to remove their feathers. When they�re killed, chickens are still
babies, not yet 2 months old, out of a natural life span of 10 to 15
years.
The average American meat-eater is responsible for the
abuse and deaths of approximately 2,500 chickens.
Refuse to support cruelty to animals; click
here for a free vegetarian
starter kit.
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