[4animals] KFC and bird brains

[vaalea]

So I'm waiting to hear the official report on the KFC protest.... and see 
pictures!!


until then, there was some discussion about the intelligence of 
birds/chickens when we were packing up, and so I share with you the 
following (and a few other animal stories...):

I once saw on America's Funniest Home Videos, a little bird on a dock with 
some bread crumbs... but instead of eating them, the bird would pick them 
up, bring them down to a beam near the water, and drop it in, poking it 
around a little. Inevitably a little fish spotted the breadcrumb and went 
for an easy meal, at which point it was nabbed by the bird. This bird had 
turned a little meal of crumbs into a bigger meal of fish!


Bird Brains
http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/
Breaking the code on chicken clucks
http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/pdfs/data/1999/15609/15609-10.pdf
Study: Chickens Think About Future
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050711/chicken.html
Chicken Talk
http://www.upc-online.org/stories/chicken_talk.html
Chicken Intelligence
http://www.chickenindustry.com/cfi/intelligence/
""Certainly they have a genetic predisposition, but they also have 
intelligence rarely nurtured by humans." When it is nurtured, the results 
are often surprising."
http://www.vivavegie.org/vvi/vva/vvi7/vvi7-2.html
The Hidden Lives of Chickens
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens.asp
Gay storks make good parents
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1853621.html?menu=
Budgie wins cross-stitching award
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1673449.html?menu=news.quirkies.animaltales
Parrot helped catch robbers
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1458355.html?menu=news.quirkies.animaltales
...
Humour is also not only the province of humans. Chimps mock, dogs tease and 
parrots provoke. When asked to identify the colour of a white towel held up 
by a teacher, a gorilla named Koko repeatedly signed "red". Then, grinning, 
she plucked off a bit of red lint clinging to the towel, held it up to the 
trainer's face and signed "red" again.
What are the implications for humankind's relationship to animals when we 
acknowledge and embrace the richness of their sensory experience of their 
worlds? It is convenient and economical to exclude animals from our sphere 
of moral concern - as we do, for example, in the meat, biomedical research, 
and fur industries. But is it right?
To the degree that animals can enjoy life, we may conclude that our moral 
obligations to them are greater. We may have no obligation to provide 
pleasure to another, but actively depriving them the opportunity to fulfil 
natural pleasures - as we do when we cage or kill them - is another matter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1785215,00.html