what a chicken knows

My nephews came to "work" at the garden this week. At 3 1/2 and 4 1/2, they are proud to help where they can. Digging holes in the sandbox is part of their job. We also spent some time digging up worms in the worm bins, marveling at the stink of the putrid bin with bad drainage, and the sheer masses of worms squirming within. After covering the worms back up, we harvested some chickweed to add to our leftover noodles and went to feed the chickens.

As we watched the chickens snatch up the noodles from the ground and each others' beaks, my younger nephew observed that the chickens must think the noodles are worms. Probably so. And the older one chimed in with the question: "Kyla, does a chicken know it's a chicken?"

Hmm. Good question. They know perfectly well how to be chickens--how to scratch, how to lay eggs, how to communicate in their own chicken way. And the rooster didn't need any lessons on his job--he stands proudly over the flock, making sure they all get to eat while he watches for dangers (among which I am unfortunately included--but that's another story).

The ego must certainly belong to humans more so than the rest of our animal family. If chickens worried about whether or not they were good chickens or bad chickens, lonely chickens or poor chickens, they wouldn't have time to eat and preen and sleep and cluck. Or they might preen when they should be eating, or eat when they should be sleeping.

I wonder if the chickens at the garden experience themselves not as individuals, but as part of the garden community. Not separate from the worms they tug out of the earth or even the humans that come to feed them and witness their antics, but of a piece with their small world.
Or do they think "I am a chicken, and I am eating a worm, and those people are watching me"?

I didn't get a chance to answer my nephew--by the time I finished thinking about the question, he had moved on to something else. But I think a chicken must know that it is a chicken, and also that it would mean nothing to be a chicken were there not also a world to live within, full of chicken food and chicken shelter, eggs and hawks. I don't know if this constitutes an ego, but if it does, it is ego in its most healthy expression--a knowledge of self in context of community.