What Do You Mean,
You ONLY Eat
Chicken?
Chickens are gentle, intelligent birds with individual personalities.
They feel happiness, loneliness, fear and pain, just as dogs and cats
and humans do.
Did You Know?
“Chickens show sophisticated social behavior:
That’s what a pecking order is all about. They can recognize more
than a hundred other chickens and remember them,” reports Dr.
Joy Mench, professor and director of the Center for Animal Welfare at
the University of California at Davis.
“[B]irds have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals,
even primates,” said Dr. Lesley Rogers, a professor of neuroscience
and animal behavior, in The Development of Brain and Behaviour in
the Chicken. Chickens are able to understand that recently hidden
objects still exist, which is “beyond the capacity of small children,”
according to Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication
at Macquarie University in Australia.
Professor Christine Nicol, who studies chickens’ learning abilities,
told the British Association Festival of Science at Leicester University,
“Chickens have shown us they can do things people didn’t
think they could do. There are hidden depths to chickens, definitely.”
Kim Sturla, who runs a sanctuary, “Animal Place,” has seen
chickens protect each other. Two older chickens, Mary and Notorious
Boy, bonded and would roost on a picnic table together. One night, when
a storm hit, Sturla went out to take the birds into the barn and saw
that the rooster had his wing extended over the hen, protecting her
from the rain.
“Chickens love to watch television and have vision similar to
humans. They also seem to enjoy all forms of music, especially classical,”
revealed the 2002 PBS documentary The Natural History of the Chicken.
Prisoner of Your Plate
“Broiler breeder” chickens
have their toes, spurs, beaks and combs cut off without painkillers,
and a stick is shoved through the males’ nostrils so that they
can’t get to the females’ food...all for a bucket of fried
chicken.
They are also crammed by the thousands into filthy sheds that reek
of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste. Because they are genetically
manipulated to grow too large too fast, they are starved in order
to keep them from growing so big that they can’t reproduce.
It doesn’t have to be this way! During his or her lifetime,
the average meat—eater is responsible for the abuse and deaths
of approximately 2,500 chickens. You can personally save the lives
of thousands of birds—by not eating them.
Chicken: Fatty and Fowl
Noshing on nuggets and digging into drumsticks can wreak havoc on your
heart and waistline. Chicken flesh is high in fat and cholesterol. In
fact, it contains just about the same amount of cholesterol as beef
and nearly as much fat per ounce—51 percent! And there’s the bonus possibility
of stomach flu, because approximately one in three chickens is contaminated
with listeria, campylobacter or salmonella. 
Poultry even plays a role in the spread of deadly viruses like SARS.
According to a New York Times article by oncologist Ezekiel
J. Emanuel, virologists believe China is the source of so many new viruses
because pigs and other domestic animals are often raised in close contact
with chickens and wild birds. Birds shed the influenza virus in their
stool, and pigs contract it when they eat off the ground. Pigs can harbor
both human and bird viruses, leading to new strains of potent viruses
that can infect and kill people.
CONTEST Are You a Bird Brain?
Answer this question correctly, and youíll be
entered in a drawing for a free vegan gift basket.
Send entries to
Animal Times Bird Brain Contest,
c/o PETA,
501 Front St.,
Norfolk,VA 23510,
or via e-mail to BirdBrainContest@peta.org.
Chickens have at least how many distinct cries to communicate to one
another, including separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator
is traveling by land or sea?
a. 6
b. 12
c. 24
