Is a chicken capable of thinking this way????.........

[hooligan]

I have three bantms that live with standard chickens...and besides them being spazzier than my standards there isn;t too much of a difference

 

[SpottedCrow]

That is too funny and way too true...I think faking it is possible...
It amazes me when people think that "they're only animals". Especially since I work with both...
I've worked in all sections of the petshop that I am employed at...I was doing birds this particular day. I talk to all the animals everyday. I have a fleece coat that I always wore too...I really liked the finches just because of their little twitters and songs.
I had a set of Society Finches that always had no feathers. One was Naked Neck and the Other was Rumpless-stiltskin.
They'd always tweet at me when I talked to them...and I'd tweet back.
A year later Rumpless is still there and we're still tweeting away.
One day I go in and I call her and no reply...the other Society's were all acting strange. I saw why when I got up on top of the ladder and Rumpless-stiltskin was dead on the bottom of the cage...I burst into tears.
So I went and got a body bag for her and a piece of millet and a sprinkling of food. I got back up on the ladder and went to get her body. Every single finch, Society, Zebra, Spice, Lady Gouldian stopped whatever they were doing and stood silently at the back of their cage!
It was like they were paying respects for the loss of a friend and for MY loss.

 

[CarlaRiggs]

Thanks for the post, Hooligan.
Can this article with the full footnotes be found on the internet? I'd like to read it in its entirety.

Carla

 

[hooligan]

Quote:
Here's the footnotes:
1 William Grimes, “If Chickens Are So Smart, Why Aren’t They Eating Us?” The New York Times 12 Jan. 2003, late ed..
2 Grimes.
3 Grimes.
4 Rick Weiss, “Bird Brains Get Some New Names, and New Respect,” The Washington Post 1 Feb. 2005: A10.
5 Ananova, “Chickens ‘Not Just ‘Bird Brains,’” 2005.
6 Michael Specter, “The Extremist,” The New Yorker 14 Apr. 2003.

7 Lesley Rogers, The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken, CABI Publishing: Oxfordshire, U.K., 1995: 217.
8 Specter.
9 Grimes.
10 Jennifer Viegas, “Study: Chickens Think About Future,” Discovery News 14 Jul. 2005.
11 Viegas.
12 Ananova.
13 Valerie Elliott, “Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?” London Times Online 18 Mar. 2005.
14 Weiss.

15 Bernard Rollin, Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical, and Research Issues, Iowa State University Press: Ames, Iowa, 1995: 118.
16 Ananova.
17 Specter.
18 Specter.
19 Specter.
20 Grimes.
21 The Humane Society of the United States, “Chickens,” 2005.
22 The Bible, Matthew 23:37-38 (New King James version), BibleGateway.com 2005.
23 The Humane Society of the United States.
24 The Humane Society of the United States.
25 Alex Cukan, “Chickens More Than Just Dumb Clucks,” United Press International, 20 Sep. 2002.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

I wouldn't think chickens have the capability to reason like that. If they did, wouldn't all the chickens play dead or ill on the day of butchering?

I agree that some animals are capable of such a thought process but these animals are more learning orientated. Not that chickens are rock dumb, but from hatch they survive on instincts.

I once had a horse that would limp everytime it saw a saddle. So I cannot say it is impossible for them to "play" sick. This particular horse was a rowdy thing, running and bucking in the pasture. She even did fine in the lunge ring, but heaven help if she saw someone carry a saddle out of the barn. You would have thought she broke her leg! But if we ignored it and saddled her anyway, by the time we mounted and got on our way she stopped limping. Go figure right? Even had the vet come out and check this horse several times and give the A-OK.

I think if you put your chick in the coop and just kept an eye on her. She will adjust to being back where she belongs. I often have birds act ill or distraught when I first put them in an area they really do not want to be. But, please keep an eye on her just in case she is really ill.

Sometimes without meaning too, we give the chickens more credit then they earn. I love them, don't get me wrong. But if they had such high thought processes I think we would have noticed more by now. Like commercial farms all of a sudden missing hundreds or thousands of chickens, because the chickens "realized" what was going to happen to them. Know what I mean?

Give her some time outside and watch her from a distance and see what she does. If you run to her "rescue" everytime she acts up, you may be conditioning her to act that way. Training, if you want to put it that way.

I would watch and wait. Maybe she just needs an adjustment period to being back outside.

-Kim

 

[Chickndaddy]

A little off topic, but SpottedCrow's ctory reminded me of it. I don't know if anyone else remembers, but there was a Crocodile Hunter episode where "Mary" one of Steve's original female crocodiles and one of the oldest at the zoo died of what they assumed was old age. She was partly in the water and partly laying on land. When she hadn't moved Steve got in the enclosure to check on her. In that particular exhibit there was one very large male and two to four additional females. Steve actually got in the water and started crying and holding her. None of the other crocodiles approached him. The remained on the opposite bank or floating in the water some distance away. Even when they brought in a back hoe to dig a hole to bury her in the crocs remained calm and unaggressive. Of course I was crying throughout the entire thing, but I did find that behavior pretty odd. We've all seen them drag lawnmowers into the water, and lunge at him, etc.

I also had a dog who was hit by a car. I heard her crying and went to investigate. No real injuries although her foot was bleeding a little. This happened at my grandmother's who was about half a mile up the road from me. No one would drive her down to the house so after and hour or so of limping slowly through the pasture I get her home. I set her up a nice comfy spot on the porch as I'm sure she was sore, and got her some food and water so she wouldn't have to get up. I walked in side. I looked out to check on her five minutes later and she was running around playing with the other dogs in the yard. When I opened the door she immediately pulled up her paw and started limping and crying. I told her it was no good and went inside.

So yes, I would say animals are capable of complex behaviors we can barely begin to understand.

 

[Guitartists]

Well, I think DEATH is one of those... how do you learn from it once it's happened?... kind of things

No way for them to know! Who's come back to tell them?

LOL

 

[Guitartists]

And really... are we SO different ourselves? Do we not do what we need in order to secure food, shelter, offspring

I think the only difference is that we THINK about our instincts... we process motives etc.

Perhaps animals see no purpose in a higher purpose

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
Sweet and simple. I believe it is why we find watching them in the yard so calming sometimes, same thing with fish in an aquarium. (Despite the fighting and cannabalism. LOL)

-Kim

 

[LinckHillPoultry]

I would say I agree with MissPrissy. If she is in fact acting ill, she more than likely is.
For example, I had a grey japanese bantam hen whom always got sick. I don't know what she had. She would always come indoors when she was sick, or stay free roaming with scooter the rooster, and then a week after special treatment she would seem fine, I'd put her back in the pen and then the next few days I'd notice it was back again. I never did actually figure out what had been the matter with her because she passed away a few weeks ago.

But another thing is, a lot of times people may end up with a "gifted" animal of a certain species. For example, a person breeding horses for a living may in fact end up with an extremely smart horse, and then they'd have another one who is as dumb as a box of rocks.

It all depends.