Animal Writings

Based on real conversations I've had:

"Chickens are stupid," he said.

Chickens employ at least 25 distinct calls. They understand object permanence at birth, whereas humans require at last three months to grasp the concept. Chickens do as well as primates at some video games. Scientists have discovered that chickens are intelligent and behaviorally complex, and that they form sophisticated, meaningful social networks. Each one has a unique personality.

"Chickens are dirty," he said.

In a natural setting, chickens' feathers are pristine. The ground on which they walk, the trees in which they roost, and the air they breathe are clean. Only in industrial settings, where they are deprived any semblance of normalcy and are denied the opportunity to engage in any of their natural behaviors, do we force hens to live in permanently dirty, unhealthy environments.

"Chickens are cowards," he said.

Chickens use their speed to escape predators and stay alive. That's a smart strategy that serves them well. They also fly to high branches for safety. (Modern "broiler" chickens can't do that because breeders seeking extra profit have made them too heavy, and the public with its appetite for flesh tacitly condones the practice.)

"Chickens are mean," he said.

Chickens fight only when they are threatened. They will bravely attack beings ten times their size to defend their young and their flock. Among themselves, chickens use a minimum of violence to establish order and break up fights. There are many instances of chickens expressing altruism and profound, prolonged kindnesses—toward non-chickens as well as chickens.

People will think up any excuse to exploit those whom they can exploit—those who do not have the means to fully resist their exploitation. People will defend cruelty with any implausible, irrelevant, unsupported, arbitrary, contradictory, or convoluted fabrication they can think up. If one proves false, they'll try another—ad infinitum. Oppressors demean and devalue their victims as a phony, superficial way to justify their sins. These moral failings and shameful behaviors—often on a grand scale—describe much of human history.

And—what if chickens were stupid, dirty, cowards, and mean? For that they would deserve to be mutilated, locked up, tortured, and killed by the billions?

******

We shoot and stab defenseless animals for pleasure. We take photos, smiling, next to the animals' body after we kill him. Often, the animal is wounded and bleeds to death, out of sight. No photo ops.

Rodeo cowboys act tough as they jerk a baby calf around, and flip a steer over—possibly breaking his neck—and tie the fallen, injured animal's legs together. The poor creature lies in pain and bewildered, far from anything resembling home, while the crowd roars their approval and rock bands like Bon Jovi provide musical accompaniment. The "tough" cowboys shock bulls and horses with 5000 volt electric prods and think they're cool when they jump on the frightened, hurting animals' backs.

Off the coast of eastern Canada, men club baby seals who can't even swim, as the mother seals are forced to look on helplessly. The murderers are afraid to have anyone from outside witness this cowardly massacre. In fact, they've made it illegal.

We have not only enslaved billions of animals every year and summarily slaughtered most of them before they reach adulthood, we've changed their shape and composition so that they suffer on our behalf nearly every moment of their lives.

Are we mean? Look at our murder rate, ongoing genocides, our history of extermination and slavery. Visit any farmed animal sanctuary and ask about the rescued animals' histories, watch any undercover video of slaughterhouses or vivisection labs. See humans laugh derisively as they cause intense pain to animals who have no way to escape. "Mean" doesn't even begin to describe it. We force cows to have calves, only to take their calves away from them. We suffocate newborn chicks on hatcheries by the millions. We cut off sharks' fins and throw the sharks back in the water to die. We shoot prairie dogs for fun until their population is nearly decimated. We cause foie gras ducks to become so weak and sick they can barely stand up—because we like the taste of their diseased livers. We confine rabbits, minks, and foxes, and other animals to tiny wire cages; we brutally kill them and skin them sometimes when they're still alive, because we want to wear their fur.

Roosters may be friends with each other for life. They work cooperatively using inter-flock communications. They are generous: They share food and other treasures with the members of their flocks. They are the "good shepherds." They are only violent when we manipulate them, isolate them, rob them of companionship and the opportunity to socialize, ruin their lives, drug them, and attach knives to them. It is the humans who are out for blood in cockfighting; they impose their perverse will on normally non-violent creatures; they make the animals carry out their destructive fantasies.

Would that we could be as pure, peaceful, kind, and sensible as chickens.

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[Next up: an addendum. (At least that's the plan.)]

Labels: chickens, defense mechanisms, violence