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Empathic Chickens: The Case of the Missing Fowl

 I forgot to put the chickens to bed last night.

Well, they put themselves to bed, obviously. All I do is walk out to the coop and close the little door. If I time it right, they’re already sitting inside on their roosting bars, settling down. Ten minutes too early, of course, and they’ll still be milling about outside the run. Trying to round them up, catch them, or otherwise herd them into the coop is such an exercise in frustration that it’s simply easier to wait until they’ve put themselves to bed.

So long as you remember to do it.

Last night I did not remember to do it, as buttoning up the chickens often needs doing right as I’m cooking dinner or putting it on the table and calling the family, on the nights I’m cooking. It’s the sort of thing you can remember to do 364 days out of the year, and it can still have devastating consequences.

Well, I am not personally devastated. But the chicken that lost its life, that woke me up at 5-something this morning, screeching (“screaming”, in my wife’s words) as it was being attacked and carried off, I’m sure it felt pretty devastated. And, quite literally, it was physically devastated, as all we could find left of it were feathers.

Its fellow coop members may or may not be devastated. I had a conversation with my son about that before school this morning. He said, “Imagine the trauma of watching your sister being carried off or eaten.” This prompted me to speculate as to the emotional capabilities of a chicken. To ask whether a prey animal might not have some biological empathy blockers. Certainly they get shaken and worked up when one of them is attacked, but do they feel sorrow? Do they cry chicken tears as they sing fowl songs of remembrance? 

I couldn’t say. They’re often bloodthirsty, savage little creatures, self-serving to the core. 

So I tend to think they will not mourn, though it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t feel somehow diminished, as the four step out into the light where five once stood.

All because I forgot for one evening to close their door.

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