‘chickens take care of themselves, they live all around, withstanding by themselves’; they know how to ‘eat lizards, crickets, just to withstand and stay around here’ — João Karitiana, apud Vander Velden (2025) Among the Karitiana, a people from the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, there is a specific way of referring to certain animals raised in large numbers. Translated as “to grow,” kerep designates, among others, chickens, animals that do not need to be cared for directly by humans, managing on their own to find food. Even in domestic backyards, someone feeds them, which does not prevent them from finding earthworms and other things around them. But survive they do. In rural Brazil, chickens are raised free-range, fed corn or cracked corn, scratching freely around the yard. As Vander Velden explains, drawing on João Karitiana’s words, chickens take care of themselves, regulate their own rhythms and maintain a relatively independent existence. They “withstand on their own” and remain, in a way, apart from the human community they live in. (read more...)