Why did the chicken cover the road ? We do n’t know , but it probably had its understanding . A new paper published in the journalAnimal Cognitionreports that the barnyard birds ’ intelligence service and social skills are far more complex than we cerebrate .
Lori Marino is senior scientist forThe Someone Project , which aims to gainsay popular misconceptions about chicken , kine , pigs , and other farm animals . Her report , which was partially funded by the ASPCA , key experiment after experiment show that chicken are , in fact , very complex beast with rich inner and outer lives .
Last twelvemonth was a big twelvemonth for bird intelligence research . in 2016 , scientist cover that some birds are at leastas smart as apes . They ground creature - makingcrowsand cleverpigeonsand puzzle - solvingbullfinches . The phrase “ addle-head ” began to lose its import .
But amid the myth - shattering , some birds puzzle more attention than others . “ There ’s not a lot of scientific work being done on chicken cognition , ” Marino tells mental_floss , “ because if you usurp an animate being does n’t have a given trait , you are n’t go to learn it . But what research there has been is very , very compelling . ”
For good example : Studies have find that chickens have object permanence — that is , they understand that when you cover something , it does not go away — a accomplishment homo develop around age one . They ’re also open ofcountingand basic arithmetic , even as skirt . They understand logic and simple reasoning , includingsome conceptswe do n’t translate until we ’re six or seven days previous . They have some sense of meter and complex social relationships . They have distinct personalities and show one another empathy .
“ Chickens have a judgement . They have a life , ” Marino say . “ They ’re not just these slow , inert objects scratching in the debris . It islike somethingto be a crybaby . ”
Why is that so hard for us to believe ? “ It ’s a unadulterated violent storm , ” Marino explicate . The first problem is our longstanding skepticism of avian cognitive ability — the " loon " idea . We ’re getting over that , but “ the story is there , ” she say . “ The other matter is that , well , we eat them . ”
People have a vested interest group in thinking of farm animals as inanimate commodities , Marino says , because otherwise we ’d startle feel risky about kill and eating them . Instead , we rivet on turning them into better meat — a strategy that she believe dulls our scientific severeness and fleece us of the chance to larn more about our fellow organisms .
“ Most of the study that ’s done on chickens , Pisces , and cows tends to postulate test to reckon out how to make them lay more eggs or spring up faster or not peck at each other , ” she read . “ It ’s all very applied , and it misses the whole point . These are animals who have an evolutionary and adaptative story just like a chimpanzee or a dog or a human being . They ’re fauna . And at the very least , we need to come near them as fauna in their own right . ”
