There are more chickens on Earth than there are humans.
There are roughly 16 billion chickens worldwide, making them the most common domesticated animal.
But there’s more to chickens than just jokes and KFC.
Like many animals, they are more complex than they seem.
This rooster is named Shrimp.
Shrimp is no cock-fighting rooster.
He’s not the bravest rooster nor the toughest.
Instead, this rooster has something much more important: he’s sweet and gentle.
Shrimp gets bullied a lot when he goes outside.
He rarely fights back, and he’s more content to eat and walk around than to get in any altercation.
With the hundreds of animals on this ranch, Shrimp has a lot of potential friends.
But out of those hundreds of animals he lives with, he cares the most about a hen named Basil.
Basil the hen was in bad condition.
She was missing a leg due to an infection.
The hen needed a walker to even get around most of the time. Basil’s story began when she was meant to be someone’s dinner.
I guess something might have just clicked when they met because Shrimp absolutely fell in love with Basil.
If that sounds weird, it’s not.
Chickens have much more going on in those heads than you might have thought.
“Bird brain” isn’t an accurate insult.
As it turns out, birds are pretty smart.
They display good memory and cognition skills, and some display emotions too.
In a 2017 paper by Lori Marino, she wrote that chickens are “just as cognitively, emotionally and socially complex as most other birds and mammals in many areas.”
And though Shrimp and Basil weren’t in the scientist’s sample they still support her case.
Shrimp always lets his lady eat first.
Whenever there’s food, he waits till she starts eating before he does.
Whenever their owner, Amanda, throws berries on the floor, he picks them up and puts them in front of her.
Shrimp is one hell of a gentleman, isn’t he?
In case you don’t believe it, how Basil treats him back might change your mind too.
Basil normally doesn’t like the company of other chickens.
She pecks at them to leave her alone when they try to get close to her.
But she never does this with Shrimp.
She enjoys his company and seems to love him right back.
Their owner agrees with Marino’s study.
Chickens probably have more going on than we give them credit for.
“People have a tough time connecting with chickens. They’re so disconnected from what they purchase at the grocery store and the actual animals themselves.” said Amanda
Shrimp and Basil prove that chickens can do much more than just end up on your dinner plate.
Click the video below to see their adorable relationship for yourself!
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