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Prismattic comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Final: The Truth About Diets and Weight Loss - Less Wrong
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The chart that this sentence links to assumes that all animal lives are equal. But that seems untenable. We already value, say, primate, dolphin, and elephant life more than most other mammals, and birds and mammals more than insects, so why should we value cows and chickens equally? Cows have demonstrated problem-solving abilities, and in some cases appear to understand that they are headed for the slaughter. Chickens, on the other hand, can lose most of their brain and still behave more-or-less the same as they did when whole.
You have a scientific source for that, anyone able to replicate the experiment? It would be incredible if costly tissue like neurons just sat there doing nothing.
There was one famous chicken that was beheaded (during a routine slaughter) just high enough to keep the brain stem intact. A clot coincidentally prevented death from blood loss, and it lived for two years as a touring attraction, before finally dying by choking. It spent most of its time attempting to preen and peck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken
How big is a chicken's brain, anyway? As Jadael notes, the brain stem was intact. How much more is there to a chicken's brain? Also note that it hardly needed, say, its optical processing systems anymore.