Consider the Chickens: Intelligence, Ethics, And The Inner Lives Of Animals

Rafia Zakaria at The Baffler:

Thinkers and scientists like Gregg and Demuth are presenting readers with the urgent and pressing necessity for a new ethics. The unthinking, extractive, and dominant human treats animals as a lower form of existence, rather than a different form; we assess the environment based on what can be extracted from it. Like our means of communication, our means of travel, of treating disease, and so much else, our ethics need an urgent and pressing update that takes into consideration the understanding of animals. Factory farms, the constant consumption of animal products, and the greedy use of fossil fuels are the seeds of destruction.

I am not sure I could have offered the chicken and rooster of my childhood a deluxe chicken coop with high rafters, but an argument for better living conditions and the introduction of new companions for the rooster would have been easier if we had understood the first thing about the animals around us.

more here.