I'm not joining in on the ethics of meat eating debate at all, but as someone who's lived around chickens a good chunk of life, calling them extremely intelligent would be...a stretch.
Pigs though, definitely. Highly underrated animal.
Pigs though, definitely. Highly underrated animal.
Talk to a grower and they'll tell you that plants have personalities (this one doesn't like the shade, this one sulks after being repotted, etc).
Pigs are intelligent and sensitive and they have compassion for their kind and other animals. A lady I know worked in a lab that made experiments with pigs and with dogs and she saw pigs taking food on their snouts and giving it to the dogs, who were intentionally left without food, through the bars of their cells. And pigs know when you come to take one of them for the slaughter and will raise hell and try to get in the way and defend their kin. It is a heartbreaking thing killing a pig. It is very unfortunate that pigs don't produce milk or eggs or wool and we just want them for their meat becaus there's no other reason to keep them around than to kill and eat them, unlike cows or goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, horses, donkeys, dogs, cats etc etc...
(I mean, we kill those other animals too, to eat them, but we also keep some of them alive for their other products or work)