4 ms·

> clearly they are dumb AF Man, it’s wild you think this. It’s like that old story about how a fish would be considered dumb for not being able to climb a tree

by voisin 3y ago

> clearly they are dumb AF Man, it’s wild you think this. It’s like that old story about how a fish would be considered dumb for not being able to climb a tree, and a monkey dumb for not being able to swim under water. Are chickens dumb AF on the things we use to rate human intelligence? Sure. But they are massively in tune with their environment and adapt to changing light and temperatures in ways that are highly intelligent and beyond human capacity. Same with how attuned they are to predators and how they respond. They’re also smart enough to clearly behave in ways different enough and consistent enough as to form personalities. I’ve got a flock of around 35 and wouldn’t label them dumb at all.

theendisney 3y ago
If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. I have a lot of cats, i toss snacks in the back yard. They are about interested enough to find 80% meanwhile the birds sitting on the roof 40 meters away study the situation carefully and wait for the right configuration of cats before they fly in and snatch the remaining snacks. They see all of them, they never mis one. Im sure they think my cats are dumb but cats in general are not. I use to have a stray cat with a gaze powerful enough to win any stairing contest. He pulled tricks that took me years to figure out - seriously.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Well, to be fair, that is precisely what birds evolved to do. It's like complementing a tree for being tall.
  - theendisney 2y ago
    If they have plenty of food they wouldnt need to steal from animals that evolved specifically to kill them. If the cats were hungry enough often enough they would find 100% of the snacks. After fasting for 3-5 days I have crazy focus, I see and hear everything. I also have aggresive tendencies that are totally alien to my normal personality. Punching an annoying coworker all of a sudden seemed like a perfectly normal response. He is always like that, it takes no effort to ignore it.
  - bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
    Being smart (in the all ways we exhibit intelligence) is what humans evolved to do, but it'd be hard to argue that that doesn't make us smart after all.
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      I don't understand. It's true that judging humans by human intelligence should have a perfect alignment. But it's not necessarily true that judging other creatures' actions by drawing rough analogies to human intelligence is valid. Birds waiting for an opportunity to steal seeds doesn't really strike me as a universal indicator of intelligence.
- voisin 3y ago
  > If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. 1) there is still danger that the brain needs to be attuned to. 2) I often let the chickens out of the fenced in area when the grasshopper population gets unruly in the warm summer months, and if you watch the chickens hunt them, I think you’d find that even in the presence of being fed for ~10 months of the year, their brains are highly alert and they are quite good at killing fast moving, unpredictable things.
  - theendisney 2y ago
    I hear it takes only one chicken for all of them to learn a trick. My grandma had a rooster that ran many circles every morning and eventually flew to a nearby tree branch. The chickens would follow one by one, the last one needed 15 minutes worth of warming up until she was finally able to fly. I dont know what the point was but it seemed important to her? They all sat there watching until she made it.
apsurd 3y ago
I'm pro animal welfare. And i'm (trying) not to make absolute justifications for killing animals. But i really do use loose heuristics like minimizing pork because pigs are smart, beef because its terribly energy inefficient and less healthy. While plant protein is good but not appetizing. Chickens get the short end of that stick. Delicious and dumb. I have years of weight training where I've developed mass. That said, yep it's a crock of shit to be intaking so much daily protein so I just don't do it anymore and it's not a big deal. I'm trying. anyway, your definition of smart is more like evolutionary adaptation. What is consciousness is pretty much still unanswerable. Physics killed God; we're all just stimulus-response machines. So this discussion on spectrum of smartness is too loaded.
DEADMINCE 3y ago
Chickens are dumb AF not only for how we rate human intelligence, but also against all the different tests and methodologies we have to try and objectively assess animal intelligence. I don't think they are capable of really having personalities so much as a few different ingrained behaviors that differ based on genes.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  It is likely that the modern optimized broiler or layer chicken breeds are much dumber than the breeds that were common earlier. It is known that most domestic animals have smaller brains than their wild ancestors and this is likely to be even more so for the more recent breeds. (Even the recent humans have smaller brains than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, presumably due to the less challenging modern life styles.) The chickens raised by my grandparents, with which I was playing when I was a small child, had very distinct personalities. Each one of them was easily recognizable. Some appeared to enjoy to interact with me and they were very curious, while others were shy and they would run away from any human. They were roaming freely over a very large yard with abundant and varied vegetation and insects. They were exploring it all day long, finding various kinds of food for themselves. They received from humans only a food supplement, a shelter for the night and some nests for laying eggs.
  - DEADMINCE 3y ago
    I think chickens can have different combinations of behaviors, but I don't think they are complex enough to have personalities. For example, I don't think they are capable of reason, which is a requirement for personality according to the APA definition [0]. [0] https://dictionary.apa.org/personality https://dictionary.apa.org/personality

by voisin 3y ago

theendisney 3y ago

If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. I have a lot of cats, i toss snacks in the back yard. They are about interested enough to find 80% meanwhile the birds sitting on the roof 40 meters away study the situation carefully and wait for the right configuration of cats before they fly in and snatch the remaining snacks. They see all of them, they never mis one. Im sure they think my cats are dumb but cats in general are not. I use to have a stray cat with a gaze powerful enough to win any stairing contest. He pulled tricks that took me years to figure out - seriously.

jvanderbot 3y ago
Well, to be fair, that is precisely what birds evolved to do. It's like complementing a tree for being tall.
- theendisney 2y ago
  If they have plenty of food they wouldnt need to steal from animals that evolved specifically to kill them. If the cats were hungry enough often enough they would find 100% of the snacks. After fasting for 3-5 days I have crazy focus, I see and hear everything. I also have aggresive tendencies that are totally alien to my normal personality. Punching an annoying coworker all of a sudden seemed like a perfectly normal response. He is always like that, it takes no effort to ignore it.
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  Being smart (in the all ways we exhibit intelligence) is what humans evolved to do, but it'd be hard to argue that that doesn't make us smart after all.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    I don't understand. It's true that judging humans by human intelligence should have a perfect alignment. But it's not necessarily true that judging other creatures' actions by drawing rough analogies to human intelligence is valid. Birds waiting for an opportunity to steal seeds doesn't really strike me as a universal indicator of intelligence.
voisin 3y ago
> If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. 1) there is still danger that the brain needs to be attuned to. 2) I often let the chickens out of the fenced in area when the grasshopper population gets unruly in the warm summer months, and if you watch the chickens hunt them, I think you’d find that even in the presence of being fed for ~10 months of the year, their brains are highly alert and they are quite good at killing fast moving, unpredictable things.
- theendisney 2y ago
  I hear it takes only one chicken for all of them to learn a trick. My grandma had a rooster that ran many circles every morning and eventually flew to a nearby tree branch. The chickens would follow one by one, the last one needed 15 minutes worth of warming up until she was finally able to fly. I dont know what the point was but it seemed important to her? They all sat there watching until she made it.

apsurd 3y ago

I'm pro animal welfare. And i'm (trying) not to make absolute justifications for killing animals. But i really do use loose heuristics like minimizing pork because pigs are smart, beef because its terribly energy inefficient and less healthy. While plant protein is good but not appetizing. Chickens get the short end of that stick. Delicious and dumb. I have years of weight training where I've developed mass. That said, yep it's a crock of shit to be intaking so much daily protein so I just don't do it anymore and it's not a big deal. I'm trying. anyway, your definition of smart is more like evolutionary adaptation. What is consciousness is pretty much still unanswerable. Physics killed God; we're all just stimulus-response machines. So this discussion on spectrum of smartness is too loaded.

DEADMINCE 3y ago

Chickens are dumb AF not only for how we rate human intelligence, but also against all the different tests and methodologies we have to try and objectively assess animal intelligence. I don't think they are capable of really having personalities so much as a few different ingrained behaviors that differ based on genes.

adrian_b 3y ago
It is likely that the modern optimized broiler or layer chicken breeds are much dumber than the breeds that were common earlier. It is known that most domestic animals have smaller brains than their wild ancestors and this is likely to be even more so for the more recent breeds. (Even the recent humans have smaller brains than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, presumably due to the less challenging modern life styles.) The chickens raised by my grandparents, with which I was playing when I was a small child, had very distinct personalities. Each one of them was easily recognizable. Some appeared to enjoy to interact with me and they were very curious, while others were shy and they would run away from any human. They were roaming freely over a very large yard with abundant and varied vegetation and insects. They were exploring it all day long, finding various kinds of food for themselves. They received from humans only a food supplement, a shelter for the night and some nests for laying eggs.
- DEADMINCE 3y ago
  I think chickens can have different combinations of behaviors, but I don't think they are complex enough to have personalities. For example, I don't think they are capable of reason, which is a requirement for personality according to the APA definition [0]. [0] https://dictionary.apa.org/personality https://dictionary.apa.org/personality