A man who sailed round the world with a chicken (2019)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
They're pretty smart, can be very friendly and (not many people know this) they actually smell nice - kind of like a new puppy smell.
I'm skeptical that they can be considered "pretty smart" - your expected intelligence level has to be pretty low to be surprised by a chicken's brain. If you anticipate little more than an unfeeling, unthinking plant - yeah, they've got emotional and social capacity, will bond with humans, and they can occasionally be clever when sufficiently motivated, but they're not the sharpest bulbs in the barn.
This is a fair point. My coop has 6 nesting boxes, and it definitely seems as if one or two are designated "toilet cubicles".
>>I'm skeptical that they can be considered "pretty smart"
By "pretty smart" I'm not talking dolphins or chimps. I think they are at least as smart as a comparative pet such as a rabbit or a guinea pig.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-startling-int...
https://bitchinchickens.com/2023/04/03/chicken-diapers-dos-d...
Fun biology fact: birds can't control their n.1 and n.2 because anything that they would potentially store would make them heavier for flight
I'm glad the guy did okay-- it's nice that so many unwise decisions didn't lead to total disaster, and makes for a great story... but I certainly hope no one tries to emulate this. Almost seems irresponsible to promote in the current social media climate. He's lucky to be alive.
He later crossed the Atlantic by rowing, back and forth, and this year he did the Vendée Globe race.
This guy's determination and dedication is insane.
A chicken already lays eggs daily, what more protein do you need?
Also /s aside(from me or op), this comment feels like it's from someone who never had a buddy or travel companion.
Either both make it or you don't, otherwise you're not travel companions.
When I was one, I'd make a few exceptions each year. At the time, I was a serious competitive chess player with a well obscured tendency for occasional brilliance. But mediocrity was my primary trait. On every occasion, without failure, these carnivorous exceptions would lift my mediocrity into formidable respectability. Every time.
Killing and salivating on animals for the sake of a board game is macabre. Though it was not only chess. For me, much else is affected by the absence or presence of this mysterious substance.
I wish we had figured out the true reasons for this by now, because protein supplements never quite matched or equalled the results of a properly ingurgitated beast chunk. I still wonder. I certainly want to change it.
This is a good opportunity for prayer, to ask or beckon the seemingly aloof mind of the aether for wisdom and express a will for something better. To ponder.
Crickets.
Existentially, I oppose this universe. It's magnificence aside, there's something shameful about its role as a giant digestive system where its every component is eating itself, fastidiously vying for energy exchange ever malcontent. Stars eating stars, beast eating beast, particles eating waves.... An insatiable auto cannibal, a meandering mongoloid ouroboros, a mockery of the inevitable perpetual motion device that birthed it billions of years ago.
I protest this frothing stolid bang of intractable drooling entropy. I wish it would leave the chickens and everyone else alone.
Is it thinkable that one or both of your parents felt nice in meatful situations, which allowed you as a child to relax and feel safe?
We are a container full of memories. Reprogramming requires more than just a different cognitive decision in the present. I claim there is nothing physically inherent in meat that creates your emotional response.
I wish i could find the Huberman podcast episode again where he was interviewing some researcher or so who went over a wide host of less known compounds beneficial for the brain in some minor ways. Far too often he opened with having to disappoint the vegans or vegetarians because these were only found in (red) meat and/or fish or so.
It's been a long time since but i remember coming to the conclusion from that and some research that whilst you didn't need to eat a lot of those for it (I'd assume less than the average western diet except maybe of fatty fish) there was no way to supplement all of them and live "optimally" without em.
It's a weak claim.
There are beneficial compounds unique to pretty much every food you can think of like avenanthramides in oats, curcumin in turmeric, and sulforaphane precursors unique to broccoli. It doesn't mean you need every last one of them to optimize your health.
And in some cases like fatty red meat, the juice isn't necessarily worth the squeeze.
It's a claim that wasn't made.
>There are beneficial compounds unique to pretty much every food you can think of
Which is why one should eat a varied diet rich in greens, fibre, etc
>curcumin in turmeric, and sulforaphane precursors unique to broccoli
I suggest you do a quick search on each of these. and avenanthramides are antioxidants but far from the only ones.
There already exists an alternative protein production method, the use of a genetically-modified strain of some fungus (currently there exist such strains of the fungus Trichoderma), which has been modified to produce a soluble protein with optimal amino-acid profile, i.e. either whey protein or chicken egg white protein. This method can produce protein powders at a low cost, with the potential to become cheaper than the same proteins from milk or eggs.
I have experimented for a few years with using only vegetable protein sources, but I have eventually given up, because the restrictions that this imposed on my meal choices were not worthwhile.
Now, I use besides vegetable protein sources also some whey protein concentrate powder (which not only has a better composition, but it is also much cheaper than any industrially-produced plant protein extract, having about the same price as chicken meat). Thus I can cook whatever vegetable food I want without worrying about the protein content or the amino-acid profile. When necessary, I mix protein powder in the food that I am cooking, to ensure an adequate protein intake.
This is good enough for me, because even if I enjoyed eating various kinds of meat in the past I feel no need now to eat fake meat.
Here on HN there was last year some news about a startup attempting to produce proteins in this way, by fungal cultures, but at least for now they had in mind only industrial customers. Nevertheless, if in the future such cheap fungus-produced protein powders became available at retail, that would solve for me, and for others who might not care about expensive fake meat, the problem of the protein content of a vegan diet.
However, you have a big problem if they discover they can crack eggs and eat the contents. They go crazy on them and it's difficult to get them to stop.