Why the caged bird sings: Rethinking the Anthropocene with Gallus gallus

Abstract

Previous research argues Gallus gallus (chickens) makes a strong candidate for a chrono-stratigraphic signal of the Anthropocene, but the history of how G. gallus came to mark the Anthropocene remains to be told. At the macro-level, G. gallus tells a story of slavery, sexism, scientific progress, settler colonialism, nation building, socialist welfare programs, capitalist expansionism, and plantation agriculture. At the micro-level, G. gallus tells a story of the suffering of crippling growth rates and confinement as well as the agency of metabolic labor; goal-directed behavior of hunger, thirst and survival; and resistance in the form of efforts at escape and violence of feather pecking. This paper tells a history that recognizes the sensorial worlds and intentionality of G. gallus, and demonstrates how G. gallus is one instantiation of an assemblage of species that were co-opted into a system that partially overlaps with and simultaneously sustains and threatens the technosphere.