As someone who raised chickens: they could care more about family ties.
Of course there will be differences between breeds and individuals but some things I witnessed:
- roosters, brothers by blood, fighting to the death
- chickens stealing eggs from each other
- chickens eating their own eggs (animals with good feed, grass and oister shells to peck on, fully available)
- younger chickens ganging up on the matriarch
- chickens killing their own chicks with no need to worry for lack of resources
Chickens are not gentle. In great enough numbers, chickens will even attack their predator. The birds can evaluate risk/success odds.
Again, there are more tame breeds and less tame ones. Some are the spawn of the deep pits where nightmares fester and grow.
Far to many people that have no experience with animals give them human thoughts and competency.
That’s a mouth full.
Sometimes it seems we are too evolved for our own good but I like to think this tendency of ours will lead to a greater good.
That theory goes out the window when you have a city sliker meet a farm animal in person. One of my favorite childhood pass times was seeing city blokes cower in fear of petting a chicken or goat especially when that same person has pictures of chickens in their home because they are cute
The goat I understand. Those fuckers are mean, and they bite. Who TF is afraid of a chicken? Turkey, sure. Again, they are mean and big enough to fight back. The chickens found out that they “can” become soccer balls if they piss off the ape that is bringing them food.
I’ve got a mug from a town I used to live in. It’s a rooster with the name “Shitty Larry” written across it. He was a local celeb. A rooster so badly behaved he had to be rehomed, and the people who adopted him created a whole lifestyle around dealing with his “antics”.
As I was leaving, Fucking Frank was also coming into the spotlight.
They’re assholes. But they taste good.
I live in a largely portuguese area, but there are definitely “cousin” dishes to Coq au Vin, chicken and chourico (or linguica) stews with a dash of saffron or paprika, some good portuguese wine. Deliciuos.
What people need to realize, especially those in peta, is that we cannot compare the suffering and mass killing animals to the same happening to humans. Speaking to someone who loves animals, they are a completely different life form that do not have human morals, values, intelligence, or emotion.
Which isn’t to say that they don’t have their own intelligence or emotion, it’s just very different from what the human thought process is like.
Thus it would be absurd to put them on the same pedestal as homosapiens, evolutionarily speaking.
Life is not a Disney cartoon, that I understand that I will be down voted by vegans who don’t understand this and will call me cruel.
That said I obviously support the Humane treatment of animals, but if you think I’m going to stop eating a creature that would eat me with far less hesitation if the roles were reversed, you are truly a fool.
We had chickens when I was a teen. They regularily hunted, killed and ate small rodents, lizards/snakes and sometimes even small birds like young sparrows whenever they could catch them - everything that fits into a chicken’s beak is fair game. And it wasn’t exactly a pretty sight. Imagine a single panicked field mouse being chased by sixteen feathered mini velociraptors, all trying to kill the mouse first, and then all fighting each other FOR the (hopefully) dead prey, as noone ever wanted to share their kill.
Funnily enough, the rooster was was a cuddly little idiot. (he got beaten up by the hens occasionally)
And just t add some proof for some of the points above, here’s a video of a single hen killing a hawk (warning, it is kinda graphic). They don’t even need great numbers to shred their wannabe predators - one really p*ssed off chicken and an opportunity to strike back, that’s all it takes.
I didn’t witness it but there are a few chicken farms around the area - the kind where chickens can freely roam around a huge shed - and I was told from an acquaintace that works at one they had been on the lookout for foxes, as they had already destroyed a few coops around the farm.
One morning they arrive at the barn to find a few dead chickens and two foxes partially skeletonized on the floor. It was a gruesome sight and the recording from the security cameras showed the foxes had been completely overrun by a mob of angry chickens that pecked, kicked and essentially killed by the thousand cuts method the poor wannabe predators.
The few chickens the foxes managed to kill were not enough to deter the mob but instead served to further spur it into a killer frenzy.
Because foxes are a protectes species, they had to call the authorities to give notice and have the cadavers picked up. Even the municipal vet was horrified at the state the chickens had left the foxes.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
here’s a video of a single hen killing a hawk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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i’ve heard chickens will just casually peck others to death if they have a wound too, like it’s not even malice or removing competition, they just do it from some fucked up instinct.
I own chickens and have had a bullying problem in the past. In the winter they have a lot less space and they get bored and stressed easily. The hen that took the “rooster”/protector role started pecking the smallest and sweetest chicken and drew blood. I had to keep the small chicken isolated from the flock for a few weeks while its wounds healed and put special goggles on the bully chicken for a month- they prevent it from seeing in front of itself so it forgets what’s there after a few seconds. Yeah they can be vicious, but it’s definitely preventable if they’re raised right instead of at a factory farm.
I’m pretty sure i saw somewhere that mexican cartels would use pigs as a method to dispose bodys pretty grim
You could save all of this cruelty by using egg substitutes and faux meats instead.
I could keep these little dinosaurs as pets, with no other objective or purpose besides admiring them because they are pretty to look at and that would not prevent any of the behaviors I listed.
What I’m about to say may evade you but cruelty is not an exclusive trait to human beings and chicken are a good example of it. They can be extremely cruel towards their own kind just for the sake of it. Not out of scarcity of food or living space. Just because they want to make another animal miserable.
The only one I’m having trouble thinking of an example is the chicks rising up against the matriarch, but that’s simply because I cannot think of an example of a matriarch in The Bible. The rest are covered in the Old Testament, possibly even The Torah.
The Torah and Bible are actually based on stories derived from watching chicken society fail to develop? This is my new headcanon
they could care more about family ties.
ugh, the consequences of internet grammarian fascism: people using normative language to make a quirky riff on a nonsense “rule”
I thought he meant what he said literally. They could care more but choose not to.
They’re intelligent and very instinctive birds from birth- that doesn’t mean that they’re vicious though. My chickens that I’m raising are all sweethearts. It’s all a matter of their environment. If you overcrowd them in an indoor factory farm of course they’re going to turn on each other, they’re extremely stressed out. Chickens that are raised outdoors with lots of space and different kinds of food are a lot less likely to act up and turn on each other. You can even taste a noticeable difference in eggs from happy chickens.
Roosters on the other hand are usually fucking assholes.
I had about a dozen chickens in an outdoors coop, with plenty of space (about 32 cubic metres of tridimensional space) and often carried them around in a chicken tractor (birds of prey area where I live) for grazing and some individuals exihibited extreme behaviors.
Again, variations will occur from breed to breed and from individual to individual.
Some breeds are especially known for being tamer than others and more concerned with eggs and brood than others.
I’ll partially agree on your statement that all roosters are assholes: we had one that enjoyed crowing when we were trying to talk anywhere in the bird’s line of sight.
Well it may not have had much a family since hens cannibalise their chicks.
Chickens are basically tiny raptors. They even hunt mice when given the chance
It’s actually for that reason why my family liked to joke about how the chicken were better at pest control than our cats especially every time we found a dead mouse in the coop or a cat getting bored of a mouse. Honestly the only reason my family keeped the cats we had was because people kept abandoning cats at my grandparents barn and we just find the poor little guys cute
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/QSuu0acj1LQ?si=SWLhJGgbstDkl8yn
https://piped.video/x-Xkou8TCxA?si=BqEomgnqWXcFYb82
https://piped.video/b37qU7lI8Xc?si=-s-HzVjMRGJMyp7T
https://piped.video/hGuSyhg2HCk?si=GT99KgGvKp4ei4NW
https://piped.video/vk6WQp70IQ0?si=uRbW7oYQ-pG2Us1
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
fuck peta
edit: oh no! the soyboys are attacking!
They should hate PETA too. No one has done more to hurt the cause of ending animal cruelty than PETA.
smirk@sh.itjustworks @smirk:sh.itjustworks however you use mentions
"just case the textbook anti-PETA rhetoric comes into the thread…
This is why people hate PETA.
Yes, PETA does some crazy shit, but as with many things there are two sides to the story which is difficult to see when you get bombarded by anti-PETA stuff as is common on e.g. Reddit.
Anti-PETA efforts by the meat industry:
Sites like www.petakillsanimals.com are run by the Center for Organizational Research and Education, which is a lobbying platform for the fast food, meat, alcohol and tobacco industries. They also target the humane society, even John Oliver did a piece on them and their founder Richard Berman. That’s just one outlet for their misinformation-campains, they are also cited in lots of blogs and “news articles” as well, so it’s not always very obvious.
nathan-winograd-in-perspective
nathan-winograd-misinformation-machine
They are the driving power behind all the misinformation and PETA-hate that is spread around. PETA is actually doing a lot for animal rights, that’s why they are such a big target for smear campaigns:
[Their biggest victories] (https://www.peta.org/about-peta/milestones/)
[All victories sorted by recent] (https://www.peta.org/about-peta/victories/) (several per week!)
See also http://www.petakillsanimalsscam.com/
PETA and their kill-shelters:
PETA kills animals because unfortunately there are no better places for them. Blame the puppy mills and irresponsible short term owners that give up their pets a few days or weeks after getting them because they had no idea what they got themselves into. Those people create more pets than there are places for them, so instead of having them become strays and further add to the problem, PETA put down those they can’t adopt out. Because PETA accepts all animals, even those that other shelters turn away in order to not sully their adoption numbers, PETA shelters end up with many more “hopeless” animals. See more here.
The case of the mistaken dog (and how PETA doesn’t steal and murder pets):
A farmer asked PETA to euthanise a pack of stray dogs that were aggressive and violent towards the farmer’s cows. Upon arrival, PETA found the pack of stray dogs, took them to the shelter and put them down, as a free service. Unfortunately it turned out, that one of the presumed stray dogs was a pet-chihuaha called Maya, that was not sitting on the porch, as often claimed, but running freely with the stray pack, without leash or collar or supervision. PETA fucked up, because they didn’t wait the 5 day grace period to give the owners time to look for and collect their pet. That’s why they had to pay a fine and apologized for it. http://www.whypetaeuthanizes.com/maya.html
The monkey selfie:
The monkey took the picture himself btw, the photographer just left the camera lying around. I am not saying the monkey should be copyright holder and it’s an open-shut case, but it does raise the question about the photographer having ownership over something that was voluntarily and independently created by an animal. What if a painter would leave his brushes lying around and an animal would create a painting? The artist actually sees it the same way and settled for a compromise with PETA followed by a joint statement. This was a landmark case in copyright law.
PETA equating milk to racism:
White supremacists actually use milk to demonstrate their superiority over “inferior” (their words, obviously) lactose intolerant ethnicities. That’s the reason behind their campaign on the issue.
Final thoughts (I promise):
PETA does a good job at raising issues and are one of the most successfull organisations to fight for animal rights. The granting of rights is the only real way to protect animals from unneccessary cruelty. Animal welfare will always be arbitrary, both in what species are worthy of protection, and the extent of protection they are worthy of. You cannot consider yourself an animal lover without recognizing the importance of that.
Sometimes PETA (intentionally?) overshoot, that happens when you try to move the border of current perceptions (i.e. animals are objects to be used for food, clothes, entertainment). I am not here to defend their tone or (lack of) tact, and there are a number of (sometimes downright stupid) PETA-campaigns I disagree with. I’m not trying to convice you to become their friend, but at least judge them for what they are doing, not for what they are said to do.
Most of the criticism of PETA you read on Reddit comes straight from the mouths of the Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE), formerly known as the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). It’s basically a corporate propaganda organization with donors like Tyson Foods, Wendy’s, and Coca-Cola. They also run campaigns claiming obesity isn’t that major of a problem and that you can eat 10 times as much mercury from fish as experts recommend. The vast majority of the animals PETA euthanizes are suffering and are brought to PETA’s shelter by their owners specifically to be put out of their misery, but the CCF distorts that into “PETA is stealing people’s pets off the streets” and Reddit gobbles it up.
The media also knows that PETA is an easy target. Years ago I read an article in one of the British tabloids (the Sun or the Mirror) with a headline something like, “PETA blasts child’s bunny wedding!” But if you actually read the article, what happened is a kid dressed up some bunnies in wedding outfits, the “journalist” reached out to PETA and asked them to comment, and PETA said something like, “we don’t support dressing rabbits in costumes because it may be stressful for them.” And that was the end of the story, but that wouldn’t get clicks so they distorted the headline to make it sound like PETA was protesting or attacking the kid on their own accord.
For the record, I think there are perfectly legitimate criticisms of PETA, like the sexist imagery they use in some of their ad campaigns and their welfarist (as opposed to abolitionist) approach to advocacy. It just gets to me that so many redditors claim to be rational and free-thinking but then read literal corporate propaganda about PETA and swallow it whole without a second thought.
Info continued here if anyone is interested… https://sh.itjust.works/comment/2252698
I don’t do gish gallops, so I’m just going to address this:
PETA kills animals because unfortunately there are no better places for them.
That is bullshit. There are no kill shelters all over the country. There’s one in my town. They didn’t even euthanize after they were overwhelmed when we had a huge storm that destroyed structures. They just found people who would foster while they could rehome as much as they could. PETA doesn’t do that.
Its also just totally a false equivalency. Lets entertain for a moment the fact that Peta is an imperfect organization that doesn’t always do the right thing. Okay and? The industry they protest exploits not just animals, but Children and Workers. Its carbon footprint is playing an instrumental role in destroying the biosphere. But sure, PETA is imperfect so I guess we’ll all just keep eating meat.
I love it when people say this without even suggesting where to do this research. Let me guess- Google it. Because that’s what I already did.
I’m a full-time meat eater, but I respect vegans who don’t go around minding people’s businesses, which is exactly what peta does.
I think that’s the problem. So many people are unaware of the difference between vegans, militant vegans, and peta-assholes. The second and third are the hardest to differentiate (and they are different)
When you can someone to start ranting about depopulation intervention and driving food species to extinction, then you found the PETA (also the PITA)
not really. peta militancy helps no one. you arent going to make people eat less meat by being assholes and shame people for eating meat. Peta would have better results is they just advocated for people to eat less meat and be more conscious about where there food in general comes from as well as advocating for proper animal care and awareness. They are never going to stop people from eating meat and they seem to refuse to accept that.
Or maybe the dude from The Hunger Games? You know, the weird one with the bad name?
No? You don’t remember their photo campaign to try convincing people that sheep have to be skinned for wool?
Why reflect on my unethical consumption habits when I can just listen to meat industry/fast food propaganda? Mmmmm Chicken sure is tasty!
They had hopes and dreams, a 10-year plan, they JUST bought a new car, their eldest daughter just had a child…
You’re right, chickens and humans are basically identical
