Do you see me 'doing the funky human'? Photograph: AP
We are glad to see farmyard animals making an appearance in the Observer. Just a few weeks ago in news conference the notion popped up that chickens might well be cleverer than we usually give them credit for. (It must have come up between discussions of weighty matters of political import.) Somehow the clever chicken became a recurrent newsroom motif. We just knew that there was more to the inelegant broiler than met the eye, but we lacked the news peg.
Until now. The Compassion in World Farming Trust is holding a conference devoted to animal sentience - the phenomenon of creatures, presumed in the popular imagination to be fairly thick, turning out to exhibit characteristics that resemble consciousness. Sheep, it transpires, recognise different faces, human and ovine. And they like to be smiled at. Spiders like bass.
The serious point is that our industrial farming methods treat these animals like mechanical widgets, which they clearly are not. (OK, we don't farm spiders for food, but the dancing thing was too interesting to leave out.)
Thoughtful food is food for thought.
Later that same day... The blog technical guru passes us this illuminating insight into the life of a factory-farmed chicken. Watch the video. Be appalled.
