by lm

Chickens: an even more thoughtful thing than we previously thought?

A new study, published in the journal Animal Cognition, has reviewed previous research to find that, despite popular belief, chickens are intelligent and emotional animals with individual personalities.

"Unlike many other birds, chickens are categorised as a commodity, devoid of authenticity as a real animal. But chickens have the capacity to reason and make logical inferences. They perceive time intervals and may be able to anticipate future events," he said.

Dr Marino said that the scientific literature on chickens has historically been skewed by dominant perceptions of the bird as "cognitively simple", almost exclusively focusing on their potential as a food source.

I wrote a paper about how our perceptions of livestock has influenced the development of farming and the science around it a while back. The ghost of Descarte still haunts us to this day.