The only chickens I’ve ever seen are in farms or wandering the streets of some impoverished county. For such a weak, small, non-flying, delicious animal, what would their natural habitat and lifestyle be like had it not been for humans? I cannot imagine a chicken laying eggs in some nest built in a bush, calmly clucking about as a panther eats it and all it’s eggs. I have a hard time even envisioning turkeys in the wild, which are the closest equivalent to a chicken I can think of. Hell, even geese and ducks and fly away or hop in some water. Chickens seem to be placed on this earth to get eaten
Southeast Asia.
Darnit, beaten by seconds.
I shall add my own wikipedia link: Red junglefowl - Wikipedia
Chickens can cope in the wild. They’re not as heavy in the wild so they can fly better. They have enough boost to get a run and fly up to a branch out of the way of a weasel or racoon. And they more preditor aware in the wild, so they aren’t, for lack of a better word, as stupid as the domesticated ones are
Here’s an interesting article about domesticated chickens that got out after a hurricane in Kauai. They don’t have natural preditors there so they do fine, though on other islands, they have to deal with mongooses and their kind
I would suggest that had they not been domesticated, the chicken that we know today would simply not exist. Instead, there would be a more rugged species, not unlike today’s wild turkeys and other such fowls.
But most importantly, what do junglefowl taste like?
They seem to do just fine. I see flocks of them around the area here all the time. A few months ago, a mama turkey and her seven kids came wandering right past my lab window, stripping all the grass seeds they could find.
Wild turkeys don’t look a whole lot like the giant white things that are the current domestic turkey. I think that current domestic chickens look a lot closer to jungle fowl than domestic turkeys to the wild ones.
Junglefowl?
Is this why junge frau are called chicks?
<snerk>
Since they probably have a better diet, and get more exercise than domestic chickens, I’d bet that they taste like chicken, but better.
There’s a good sized population of wild (feral, really) chickens on Diego Garcia, BIOT. They don’t seem to have a problem flying up to the branches in the trees there nor are they shy of the human population.
Only if tough and gamey is your idea of “better”. (Though I should admit that this is based on wild vs farmed duck, rabbit and venison. I haven’t actually tried any wild game fowl.)
Most domesticated critters are more tasty than their wild relatives.
Did you bother to even read the thread?
Large numbers of chickens have never been domesticated, they are not readily distinguishable from several domestic breeds, they are nothing whatsoever like turkeys, and the species is doing quote well in the wild, thanks very much.
Chickens descended from domestic stock have gone feral on many islands in the tropics around the world. They usually come to resemble their wild ancestor, the Red Jungle Fowl.
Wild turkeys have increased tremendously in many parts of the US due to decreased hunting pressure. Where they are hunted, they are known as being vary wary and hard to bag.
Some parts of the US have feral turkeys, which can be distinguished from true wild stock because they have a white tip to the tail instead of bronze. This is because they are descended from the Mexican subspecies, which was the original one domesticated.
You must have a different kind than we do - here (lower rural NY) they’re as dumb as their domestic cousins. I was out driving the race car last month, and a bunch of them wandered out into the road - I was going one way and a couple bikers were going the other way, and the turkeys were just milling around in the road. We all slowed down and they waddled off to one side. Once I got past them, there were a bunch of blobs with feathers in the roadway where others weren’t as alert.
Yeah, our local wild turkeys aren’t exactly wily. They wander around my parents’ neighborhood all the time, and you could just shoot one out the window pretty easily. (In fact a neighbor did just that, and last Thanksgiving we had wild turkey.)
There’s a flock of chickens living by the freeway a little south of here, right in the town. They seem to do OK.
This sounds like a chicken superhero.
What is a chicken’s natural habitat?
The other side of the road, of course.
Which is why they keep crossing roads. Once they get to the other side, the original side becomes the “other” side, and they have to start the joke all over.