Chickens Matter!

Animals have been a significant part of my life. I remember my first pet was a betta fish when I was 5 years old. I remember being exhilarated, but I wanted more. I wanted a dog. It’s been 13 years since and I still don’t have a dog but right now my sister has a bunny and we have three chickens in the backyard. Chickens are often stereotypically depicted in movies as dumb animals, however I can say that this isn’t true from firsthand experience. They respond to my finger snapping, which they often connect with food. Whenever it's getting late they return to their pen themselves and they even made friends with my sister’s bunny. While creating this blog I actually came across research that stated that chicken’s "demonstrate thinking skills on par with mammals and primates". In fact they actually passed the mirror test discussed in the Intelligence TIME article. Overall, my experience shows that humans have highly underestimated animals: “Our dodge-a not reasonable one-has always been that animals are ours do with as we please simply because they don’t suffer the way we do. They don’t think, not in any meaningful way … But one by one, the berms we’ve built between ourselves and the beast are being washed away” (Kluger 10).

In the prologue Safina explains how he will be taking a unique perspective: a world that revolves around animals rather than humans. This ideas of humans viewing themselves as superior to animals is a common theme in the TIME and Franzen’s articles. Safina talks about the barrier between humans and animals being “artificial” because humans are technically animals, which relates to the quote in the previous paragraph. Overall, animals are commonly misunderstood to be inferior to humans, but this barrier will soon be broken down with further research and science.

Birds Matter <3