Some Americans are wary of eating chicken after the latest outbreak of salmonella.
But there is another reason to refuse poultry meat, and these are cruel methods of obtaining this meat. We tend to feel more sympathy for calves with big, cute eyes, but let it be known, birds are not nearly as mentally retarded as they are often made out to be.
Of all their two-legged people, geese are the most admired. Geese are tied to their marriage partner for life, demonstrating tenderness and support to each other without obvious marital squabbles and fights. Very touching they distribute family responsibilities. While the goose sits on the eggs in the nest, her husband goes to the fields in search of food. When he finds, say, a forgotten pile of corn kernels, instead of surreptitiously grabbing a few for himself, he will rush back for his wife. The goose is always faithful to his girlfriend, he was not seen in debauchery, he experiences something like marital love. And this makes one wonder if this animal is not morally superior to man?
In the last decade or so, scientists have conducted experiments that support the notion that birds are much smarter and more complex than we would like to think.
To begin with, chickens can count to at least six. They can learn that food is served from the sixth window on the left, and they will go straight to it. Even chicks can solve arithmetic problems, mentally track addition and subtraction, and choose a pile with a large number of grains. In a number of such tests, the chicks performed better than human cubs.
A recent study at the University of Bristol in the UK provides evidence for the high intelligence of chickens. The researchers gave the chickens a choice: wait two seconds and then get food for three seconds, or wait six seconds but get food for 22 seconds. The hens quickly figured out what was going on, and 93 percent of the hens preferred to wait for a long time with plenty of food.
Chickens communicate with each other and call to warn of terrestrial predators and birds of prey. With other sounds, they give signals about the found food.
Chickens are social animals, preferring the company of those they know and shun strangers. They recover faster from stress when they are around someone they know.
Their brains are well-equipped for multitasking, while the right eye searches for food, the left keeps track of predators and potential mates. Birds watch TV and, in one experiment, learn from watching birds on TV how to find food.
Do you think chicken brains are far from Einstein? But it’s been proven that chickens are smarter than we thought, and just because they don’t have big brown eyes doesn’t mean they should be condemned to spend their lives crammed into tiny cages in stinking barns, among dead brethren sometimes left behind. rot next to the living.
Just as we try to protect dogs and cats from unnecessary suffering without necessarily considering them equal to us, it makes sense to try to minimize the suffering of other animals as much as we can. Thus, even when there is no outbreak of salmonellosis, there are good reasons to stay away from the unfortunate birds raised on agro-farms. The least we have to do for birds is to stop despising them as “chicken brains.”