Can I just say, and I'm just being honest...

[Edwardo Piet]

I don’t understand why it’s up for debate. It seems like a commonly accepted scientific fact that poultry are sentient vertebrates....am I missing something?

Me neither, I have no idea how someone can think otherwise.

By thinking about it

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Hammy, here's some more evidence that chickens are sentient:

When I was a kid I had a friend who lived kind of out in the country and they had a chicken coup. We'd think it was funny back then to get into the coup and chase them around. They'd freak out and squeal and run all over the place trying to get away from us. (cruel, I know. I'm not proud of it, trust me.)

Anyway, my friend's mom used to get pissed at us because doing that would stress out the chickens and they wouldn't lay as many eggs.

So, there you have it. Chickens get stressed out and it effects them enough to have a biological effect.

An insentient robot could do that.

I don't think any of that is evidence of sentience.

But their brains may be developed enough for sentience, which is why I think cruelty to birds is wrong: I could be wrong.

I certainly think that cruelty to mammals is worse though. Even if birds are sentient it's not going to be on the same level as mammals and mammals aren't going to be on the same level as primates.

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To quote an even shorter part of Galen Strawson's article here:-- http://www.academia.edu/411597/The_self_..._Explained

--to anyone here that is still missing my point:

Experience of pain seems obviously useful because it motivates one to avoid sources of damage. But the tendency to avoid sources of damage could evolve without involving pain. Damage-recognition mechanisms could trigger damage-source-avoidance behaviour without there having to be any actual feeling of pain, or any other sort of experience. Perhaps some actual organisms on earth are like this.

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I think they are. It's pretty evident. Why do you disagree, Hammy? What qualifies as sentience in your book?

By the way, I'd just like to re-quote this to thank you for posing the same sort of question to me that Crossless did, but in a much more civil and respectable manner than "Why on EARTH do you think that?" as if my position is absurd by default, when perhaps he actually needs to think things through a little more than he has.

So, thanks again