Chickens Are Smarter Than You Think

Hæn-fugul (hen), Book of Hours; England, c. 1300; Walters Art Museum, MS W.102, f. 77v.

People think they know lots about chickens, and you’d think they would: There are four living chickens for every living person in the world—and since chickens are domestic fowl (a separate subspecies from their wild ancestor, the red jungle fowl of Southeast Asia), all of them live among humans.

Still, chickens are rarely celebrated in our culture and seldom given the respect they deserve. I once...