Chicken

Chickens live on farms and in backyards all over the world.

Their wild cousins, red junglefowl, still live in forests in Asia.

Chickens live wherever people keep them: on farms, in backyards and in villages on every continent except Antarctica. Wherever they live, they spend much of their time scratching and pecking at the ground.

Their wild ancestor, the red junglefowl, lives in thick forests in southern Asia, including India, and Southeast Asia. In the morning and evening, junglefowl come out into clearings to look for food.

As a domesticated animal, the chicken has no wild range of its own; the map shows the continents where people keep chickens. Its ancestor, the red junglefowl, is native to southern and Southeast Asia, where Animal Diversity Web describes it in thick secondary forest, feeding in open clearings in the morning and evening.

After domestication, chickens spread with people. Research by a team from the universities of Exeter, Oxford, Munich and other institutions found that they were carried across Asia and then around the Mediterranean along the routes of early Greek, Etruscan and Phoenician sea traders, reaching Europe around 800 BC and spreading by sea to Oceania and Africa.

Chickens eat seeds, grain, plants and bugs.

They scratch the ground with their feet and peck with their beaks. They swallow tiny stones to help mash their food.

Chickens are omnivores, which means they eat both plants and animals. They spend much of the day scratching and pecking at the ground for seeds, insects and worms, and sometimes they catch a lizard, a small snake or a young mouse.

Farm chickens are usually fed special chicken food, plus grains such as oats and corn, seeds and vegetables. They also eat grit, small pebbles and bits of shell that help grind up food in their stomachs.

Chickens are omnivores. Happy Hollow describes them scratching soil for seeds, insects and occasionally larger prey such as lizards, small snakes or young mice; domestic flocks are usually given a commercial diet supplemented with oats, corn, seeds and vegetation, along with grit of small pebbles and shells to aid digestion.

Animal Diversity Web lists corn, soybeans, worms, grass and ground grains in the red junglefowl's diet and notes that junglefowl cannot detect sweet tastes; they can taste salt but most avoid it. Researchers think grain from dry rice farming drew wild junglefowl down from the trees and toward people, starting their domestication.

Chickens live together in a flock.

They cluck to talk to each other. Roosters crow, 'cock-a-doodle-doo!' Some chickens are the bosses of the flock.

Chickens live in flocks with a ranking called a pecking order: some chickens are in charge and others give way to them. Chicks start learning the pecking order when they are only a week old.

Chickens talk by clucking. Roosters crow to tell other roosters 'this is my place' or when something disturbs them. In a junglefowl flock, the hens feed safely under the protection of the top rooster.

Chickens are gregarious and live in flocks with a dominance hierarchy, the pecking order, which Animal Diversity Web describes for junglefowl as separate orders for males and females. Dominance is shown by raising the tail and head; submission by lowering them, crouching and tilting the head. When a dominant cock dies, the next in line takes over at once.

The pecking order is introduced to chicks at about a week old and is settled in about seven weeks. Chickens communicate by clucking, and roosters crow as a territorial signal to other roosters or when disturbed.

People have kept chickens for thousands of years.

Long ago, some people kept chickens as special birds, not for food. Now chickens live all over the world.

Chickens are domesticated, so they are not listed as an endangered or wild species. They are now one of the most common animals in the world.

Scientists found that when chickens first spread to Europe, people often treated them as special and did not eat them. Some chickens were even buried with people. Eating chickens and eggs became common later, and in Britain chickens were not eaten regularly until the third century AD.

As a domesticated animal, the chicken is not assessed on the IUCN Red List. Its ancestor, the red junglefowl, is listed as Least Concern, but Animal Diversity Web notes that most wild populations have interbred with domestic and feral chickens, threatening the genetic purity of wild junglefowl.

The 2022 Antiquity and PNAS studies re-dated chicken bones from more than 600 sites in 89 countries. They found that early European chickens were often buried alone, unbutchered, or with people, suggesting they were venerated rather than eaten; the Roman Empire later helped make chickens and eggs common food.