If you have kids or been a care taker of kids or a teacher to kids of any kind, you well know about the rivalry that happens between kids ... especially when kids are siblings.
When people get older, there is still this same rivalry that goes on and it seems to be our nature to always want what the other person has, even when we already have one. This is the secret to successful advertisement marketing. Advertise any item in such an appealing way that it is irresistible and everyone will be envious until they get one. It's worked for centuries now.
You see the same rivalry going on in nature. We have a bird feeder in our back yard and it's interesting to watch the birds attempt to take dominance over the feeder and when one bird gets a morsel of food how all the others jump in and attempt over power that guy and get what he has.
We've almost always had 2 dogs at the same time. Over and over we've seen the dogs compete for what the other one is playing with, or eating, or even for our attention. Sometime, even when everything was perfectly calm and peaceful, there would be a momentarily dog-fight where it sounded like they were killing each other.... why? all for just a simple squeeky toy.
So, we picked up 3 baby chicken hens a little over a week ago. We purchased a chicken house / pen from Tractor Supply Company and have it set up in our living room of the house. (we have a huge family living room on a concrete floor with ceramic style flooring, so plenty of room). And the cage in straight in front of the couch so we can see what's going on all the time.
So, even though the chicks are only 1 week and 3 days old, they are growing really fast already. We have multiple types of chicken feed for them, but (we've had chickens in the past), we've started introducing other foods to them too .... namely, table scraps. Chickens on the farm eat bugs from the ground from the first day they are hatched. So, they are meat eaters. So, we had some left over fried hamburger and gave them some of it (not much, just a pinch) in the bottom of the pen area where they can run around. They went nuts over the hamburger.
They are now old enough they are going up and down their ramp into the chicken house on their own. They run around and play, eat, sleep, and play again.
Yesterday, and this morning, we got a really good laugh when one of the little girls picked up a small chunk of hamburger. The other 2 started chasing her. She ran back and forth with the other 2 in hot pursuit. It was quite obvious they were attempting to take her delicious morsel of hamburger she had dangling from her beak. Back and forth, back and forth, until she dropped it.
The one of the others grabbed it and took off, and then the race continued. It reminded of the competition between children, and in general our natures to want what the other person has or whatever advertisement is shining in our wanting eyes.
What's even more amazing is, there were plenty of other morsels of hamburger on the floor the other 2 chicks could have easily picked up for themselves. But instead, they must have though the one in the mouth was the best one. And even more amazing, these chicks are so tiny and so young (just a week old) and demonstrating such behavior.
Well, I suppose, even 2 human babies pull and tug at each other when one has "the toy", causing the other one to cry! Right!
Makes you just think and ponder about our natures, doesn't it?