Seeing the World Through a More Compassionate Lens

Although we are yet to completely win the little chap over, we have found grapes are a great negotiating tool!

Hampering our kindness, though, beyond the years he spent in a horrid and barren wire cage, is the massive “blob” of enlarged, highly vascularised skin tissue that blinds his eyes. Better known as a comb or crest, these walnut-shaped and mulberry-coloured ones are distinct to the Silkie breed.

And alas, in dear Peaky’s case, they can so often impede the hapless animal’s ability to not only see, but too their ability to breathe, as eyes and nostrils become obscured.

For just shy of those most unusual Silkie combs are the most unnatural of skulls of some. With the skull’s main role to protect the brain, the skulls of these gentle birds alas do not always fill that charter. For selective breeding has introduced a “vaulted” skull. The hole in the top purported to produce an animal with a larger and more “fashionable” crest of feathers on their head.

In extreme cases, this can result in what is known as a herniated skull. Which, as the name suggests, sees the brain protrude through the opening. Its only protection, a thin layer of skin and feathers.

As dire as this all sounds, it too informs us that once we sit back and, devoid of self-interest, contemplate our actions and impacts, only then we can do better and see the world through a more compassionate lens.