Chicken

About Me

The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a large and round short-winged bird, domesticated from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia around 8,000 years ago. Most chickens are raised for food, providing meat and eggs; others are kept as pets or for cockfighting.

Chickens are common and widespread domestic animals, with a total population of 23.7 billion as of 2018, and an annual production of more than 50 billion birds. A hen bred for laying can produce over 300 eggs per year. There are numerous cultural references to chickens in folklore, religion, and literature.

Description

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Reproduction and life-cycle

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Dispersal

Oceania

A word for the domestic chicken (*manuk) is part of the reconstructed Proto-Austronesian language, indicating they were domesticated by the Austronesian peoples since ancient times. Chickens, together with dogs and pigs, were carried throughout the entire range of the prehistoric Austronesian maritime migrations to Island Southeast Asia, Micronesia, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar, starting from at least 3000 BC from Taiwan.[52][53][54][55] These chickens might have been introduced during pre-Columbian times to South America via Polynesian seafarers, but evidence for this is still putative.[56]

Americas

The possibility that domestic chickens were in the Americas before Western contact is debated by researchers, but blue-egged chickens, found only in the Americas and Asia, suggest an Asian origin for early American chickens. A lack of data from Thailand, Russia, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa makes it difficult to lay out a clear map of the spread of chickens in these areas; better description and genetic analysis of local breeds threatened by extinction may also help with research into this area.[57] Chicken bones from the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile were radiocarbon dated as pre-Columbian, and DNA analysis suggested they were related to prehistoric populations in Polynesia.[58][59] However, further study of the same bones cast doubt on the findings.[60][61]

Eurasia

Chicken remains have been difficult to date, given the small and fragile bird bones; this may account for discrepancies in dates given by different sources. Archaeological evidence is supplemented by mentions in historical texts from the last few centuries BC, and by depictions in prehistoric artworks, such as across Central Asia.[62] Chickens were widespread throughout southern Central Asia by the 4th century BC.[62]

Middle Eastern chicken remains go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC in Syria.[57] Phoenicians spread chickens along the Mediterranean coasts as far as Iberia. During the Hellenistic period (4th–2nd centuries BC), in the southern Levant, chickens began to be widely domesticated for food.[63] The first pictures of chickens in Europe are found on Corinthian pottery of the 7th century BC.[64][65]

Breeding increased under the Roman Empire and reduced in the Middle Ages.[57] Genetic sequencing of chicken bones from archaeological sites in Europe revealed that in the High Middle Ages chickens became less aggressive and began to lay eggs earlier in the breeding season.[66]

Africa

Chickens reached Egypt via the Middle East for purposes of cockfighting about 1400 BC and became widely bred in Egypt around 300 BC.[57] Three possible routes of introduction into Africa around the early first millennium AD could have been through the Egyptian Nile Valley, the East Africa Roman-Greek or Indian trade, or from Carthage and the Berbers, across the Sahara. The earliest known remains are from Mali, Nubia, East Coast, and South Africa and date back to the middle of the first millennium AD.[57]

Breeds of Chickens