MBut how the hell can an animal, in this case domesticated volatile, almost at the origin of the most ontological-scientific enigma of humanity, be considered by many fellow humans as perfectly stupid, simply capable of exploitation and intensive breeding, three hundred eggs per year, then Sunday nuggets and fries? Unfit for conversation or social interaction, even though the fundamental question “What about the egg?” What about the chicken? What about the chicken or the egg? »Aristotle is still tearing his beard (but not science, which has the answer).
This should put the flea in the ear of the sapiens : by what stroke of fate these poor feathered birds – whom we are going to try to vigorously restore here in their dignity as living beings as adapted to their environment as any other living being – are they so badly considered, far behind the monkeys, the horses and the dogs ? Not to mention those pesky dolphins who have their own fan clubs or those too, too cute little cats that we “like”, little hearts with their fingers. Let us concede however that, for a few years, the hen has won the status of new pet among certain neo-rural snobs, including the author of these lines.
However, when we talk about a “chicken” or a “casserole” for a woman, it is very unflattering. And the constabulary? “Chickens” or “house poulaga”, really? And unlike noble animals (primates, raptors or wolves), the image of gallinaceans is so disastrous that it even affects that of the bipeds who study them: “We are less in demand than those who work on primates, horses, dogs, animals considered intelligent and highly evolved. This is noticeable in conferences or in publications, for example”, notes Sophie Lumineau, deputy director of EthoS, a mixed unit in animal and human research ethology at the University of Rennes. Rachel Degrande, a doctoral student at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, whose thesis subject is entitled “Exploration of the basic cognitive capacities of reasoning in the domestic hen”, explains this disinterest by “a completely different relationship to the species”. “It is the highest production animal in the world, with 33 billion animals in 2022. How could an animal that we eat, raised in intensive conditions, prey in a word, do evidence of cognitive abilities? »
A very to the point communication
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