Discussion
After watching a crow hiding a chicken bone in our garden my husband wondered if it was perhaps a bit dark for a bird to eat another bird.
"Not at all, the hawks do it all the time. But, I must admit I was disquieted by the sight of pigeons feasting on fried chicken one day... should they not recognize the plight of their distant cousins in bondage?"
I guess it's fine for the crow since crows are sometimes hunters...
Soylent green, do you think they know?
@futurebird crows are metal. I once saw a pair of crows enjoying a baby bird they'd grabbed out of a nest. One crow bashed it on the ground to kill it, then they shared it. Kinda horrifying but I am glad to have seen it.
@futurebird IIRC, there are human cultures that routinely hunt and eat monkeys, which probably hits similarly.
@futurebird pigeons are neoavians. Chickens are galliformes. I guess it's over 66 million years since their most recent common ancestor. A few latest Cretaceous fossils have been found which are in Galloanseriformes, the clade chickens, ducks, etc. Phylogenetically, a pigeon eating a chicken is like a human eating a cow. That said, given the reactions many people have to suggestions of humans eating dogs, cats, or horses(*), it's clear few people view this as a phylogenetic issue.
True but do they not have a common cause in their relation to people? Both being domesticated birds?
@futurebird True. And both domesticated for food. (as well as other things; homing pigeons, fighting cocks, etc, etc)
But, as there are 28 billion chickens, and probably a great many pigeons as well, I guess we're very fortunate they don't think like that.
My mom's sweet canary, George, lived in a cage next to my chair in the dining room. He always begged for what I was eating, and I obliged with veg and other carb bits. One day there was nothing on my plate but a piece of chicken, and George wouldn't give up. So I fed him chicken. He hopped and flapped around like I'd never seen before. After that, he wouldn't settle for less than whatever animal protein was on my plate.
I created a monster, and it was good.
@futurebird
I have bad news for you about what chickens will eat.
@futurebird we regularly would toss the excited chickens the guts from whatever chicken we had just butchered when i was a kid
Yeah I'm not cut out for the farm.
@futurebird More a "chickens arent going to turn down available food" thought than anything else.
wasnt trying to gross
@futurebird we get these big seabirds here, some sort of gull, and one day on the sidewalk out front we saw one eating a pigeon. just ripping stuff out. there was no obvious evidence of how the pigeon died.
they certainly know these are other birds, that just isn't relevant to them. they eat. it's natural for them.
I'd expect nothing less from a gull TBH.
Pigeons have an air of innocence that seems betrayed however.
Crows don't like eagles since they can be chick thieves. Though, crows also do that.
@futurebird Many raptors feed their failed hatchlings to the healthier ones
@futurebird Humans kill and eat monkeys and apes. Some monkeys kill other monkeys. Chimps kill some human children.
For that matter, humans kill other humans and some humans have eaten other humans. I don’t think I’ve heard of crows eating other crows.
@futurebird If he thinks that's dark he should definitely not look into the eating habits of chickens...
@futurebird One of my friends used to get pretty uncomfortable watching my cockatoo happily eat fried chicken. I pointed out that they're more distant, genetically, than humans and pigs. There were birds that looked a lot like modern geese when the dinosaurs were around, I learned recently.
@futurebird once in a Mall our friend Mara saw a Pigeon eating from a discarded chick drumstick.
For 2 heart beats she just stared in disbelief and then pointed and yelled as loud as she could
“Cannibal!”
@futurebird Humans eat all kinds of mammals.
"The moment that broke me, the moment that turned me against all men, started on that horrible night. Rachel came to the roost, fluffy and excited, she had found a 'wonderful meal' --and I would like to say that I did not eat, but I did, those were hungry days for all of us. But had I known? Would I have still eaten if I had known? Who can say. And perhaps it was this question that spurred me on to change the world."
@futurebird "El Pollo Diablo was a legendary demon of the fowl persuasion, rumored to have made it to Plunder Island where he went about destroying chicken pens in order to set his brethren free. It was believed that he resided in the island's dense jungles, capturing and killing the humans found to have eaten his smaller kin."
Be gone, fowl demon!
I eat other mammals.
But would you give pause at eating a monkey?
I mean I wouldn't. But I also know they are all over the place in some parts of the world so it's probably not THAT odd.
(typos)
@futurebird @MCDuncanLab @stevegis_ssg I would discourage eating anything close enough to use to be likely to share diseases: That is the current leading theory on how HIV wound up in humans is it jumped species after a hunting accident (as has probably happened since time immemorial) but then was spread widely by French colonial immunization efforts that didn't sterilize needles between patients.
Hmm curious viewpoint, is it that monkeys are not commonly consumed here that gives me pause or that they are primates and I think they are less deserving of being food.
I think it’s the latter because I can envision being comfortable eating grubs that are eaten in other societies but still being uncomfortable eating a cat or dog or horse.
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@futurebird Cooper's Hawks hunt robins around my house; it's a bit of a disquieting scene when they're successful.