Yep. Chickens are savage psychopaths and don't give a cluck. They would eat their own flock member alive, while it's screaming for help, and they don't even have to be starving to do that! How many animals would do that to their own, at the mere sight of a speck of blood? (again, without being under imminent threat of death from starvation)Gross!
A lot if they were raised in the same conditions. Red jungle fowl wouldn’t do that because their week members are eaten by Nature herself.
You mean the conditions that my pet chickens are raised in? They have all their needs met and never go hungry, so I doubt a normal animal would eat their own family members under those conditions. But chickens aren't normal animals, as far as nature is concerned, and are a very far cry from the jungle fowl that they descended from. Like all domestic animals, they have been shaped by humans over thousands of years, and have departed greatly from what nature intended, both in terms of looks and in behavior. So, all domestic animals diverge from their natural counterparts in significant ways, but not all show such brutal, cannibalistic tendencies even when raised under favorable conditions. So my question is, why chickens? Dogs endure all kinds of neglect and abuse worldwide, but even when crammed in cages on top of each other on their way to the meat market in Asia, covered in wounds and half-dead from starvation, they still don't eat each other alive. There's something uniquely savage about chickens, and I can't quite figure out what. Maybe it's their inner dinosaur coming through
Domestic chickens are not necessarily raised in bad conditions but they are confined. They are social animals with an established heirarchy. In the wild, birds can find space and they can relieve conflicts. If there is a bird one flock doesn’t like it can just leave.You mean the conditions that my pet chickens are raised in? They have all their needs met and never go hungry, so I doubt a normal animal would eat their own family members under those conditions. But chickens aren't normal animals, as far as nature is concerned, and are a very far cry from the jungle fowl that they descended from. Like all domestic animals, they have been shaped by humans over thousands of years, and have departed greatly from what nature intended, both in terms of looks and in behavior. So, all domestic animals diverge from their natural counterparts in significant ways, but not all show such brutal, cannibalistic tendencies even when raised under favorable conditions. So my question is, why chickens? Dogs endure all kinds of neglect and abuse worldwide, but even when crammed in cages on top of each other on their way to the meat market in Asia, covered in wounds and half-dead from starvation, they still don't eat each other alive. There's something uniquely savage about chickens, and I can't quite figure out what. Maybe it's their inner dinosaur coming through
This is probably a key factor actually, because they seem to have an instinct about it that's more than a product of current conditions. Cannibalism as a stress reaction to confinement makes sense for actual confinement and actual stress, but "confinement" here is a stretchy term. Some people seem to think chickens are entitled to complete and total freedom, and any restriction on that freedom counts as confinement, which is too extreme. Pet dogs who live indoors in houses/apartments and only go outside for walks experience more confinement than chickens who have all day access to a spacious run, or better yet, chickens that free range on acres, and yet those free ranging, well fed chickens are still more likely to cannibalize their own for no good reason than the sight of blood, than the pet dog will ever be. So the confinement argument only goes so far. The cockfighting ancestry makes a lot more sense. And it would make sense that it's still showing up to this day, if nobody has explicitly bed against it, because chickens don't pose a real threat to humans, so who cares. As opposed to dogs, where the aggressive ones either get put down, or dumped, or not allowed to breed etc. and eventually such tendencies are diminished overall.
I had Ameraucana cockerels free range once and they started killing each other. So to separate them I put one in a cage. Big mistake. The other one killed him through the bars.
Agreed. I have had pigs. They will devour a whole chicken in seconds.
Yes they will. And without apologies , devouring in seconds.
