Ain't No Chicken - The Red Junglefowl

Pics : 1 - 5 = Sub Adult Red Junglefowl ; Sattal | Pics : 6 - 11 = Female Red Junglefowl ; Manas National Park | Pics : 12 - 16 = Adult Male Junglefowl ; Manas national Park

You know, the timeless debate about the chicken and the egg is actually quite silly cause even the direct ancestor of the chicken came from an egg. In fact, eggs got thrown into the cauldron of life during the pre historic times when a reptile like creature hatched somewhere around 312 million years ago. Chickens on the other hand are descendants of that creature and evolved primarily from the Red Jungle Fowl around 3500 or so years ago and it all started cause we started keeping these birds around to watch them fight for our entertainment around 10000 years ago. Folks probably realized soon that this entertainment came with other practical benefits and pretty soon the trend of domestication for breeding and consumption caught on and spread to other forms of livestock as well at around 10000 and 10500 years ago.

The domesticated Pheasants who were Jungle Fowls lost some of their physical attributes, their wild ways and they dumbed themselves down over the 6500 years that they spent around our habitats for an easy life to evolve into the Chicken. These Chickens, in time became the most populous bird species on the planet and also became one of the most common sources of protein on our plates around the world. It was pretty much a win for both species if you measure evolutionary success with just growth of numbers. Wolves evolved to Dogs for a different kind of partnership with humans somewhere around 32000 years ago but their numbers can nowhere come close to the numbers of Chickens in the world although their choices have probably given them a better quality of life and the same goes for domesticated cats as well. It’s interesting to note how attitude and behavior matter here cause no one was eating the domestics bred for entertainment, company and guard duty while fodder remained that and the difference can be seen in our attitudes towards these animals even today.

As domestication led to the evolution of the whole new species of Chicken, the wild Red Jungle Fowl continued on its parallel evolutionary path in the forests and is a pretty common sight in the wildernesses of South and South East Asia and if you’ve seen them then you know that the Jungle Fowl, ain’t no Chicken. They are easily seen in the reserves in Northern and Eastern India and there are many physical and behavioral differences between the species. These birds are a lot smaller and lighter than their domestic descendants. They have more in common with their wild Pheasant cousins than to their domestic descendants behaviorally. Although skittish and wary of danger like most Pheasants, you’ll never see them hopping about in perpetual panic like Chickens when they scatter about when a person enters their territory.

They’re a lot prettier than their domestic descendants. My post here about Kalij Pheasants mentioned how certain sub species have a gorgeous mane of sorts. During the breeding season, the male Red Jungle Fowl sports a golden brown mullet that can easily compete in beauty with the Hamiltoni Kalij’s mane. These males sport so many bright and reflective colours during the breeding season that it’s easy to see how evolution by domestication just dulled out their presence.  Both genders of the species are stunningly gorgeous and can easily compete for asthetic beauty points with the other Pheasants who are globally admired by bird photographers. Their non breeding plumage is called eclipse plumage as the same males become mostly brown and black like the females of the species and this helps them camouflage better during the non breeding season. Domestic hens look pretty similar to Roosters. Both genders of Chicken have combs and wattles with the male’s being larger and both the genders can be of similar colour. Female Red Jungle Fowl look totally different to the males of the species. They’re brown with white streaks and sport streaked golden black mullets. The females do not possess combs and wattles at all and their colour gradient of their feathers darkens from the neck to the tail which gets to black from being golden at the neck. It totally beats me how animals evolve these beautiful colour gradients and combinations that always seem to work so well together and it’s no wonder then that they are the naturally ideal inspiration for any artists colour palette. You just can’t go wrong when you use colour combinations that work naturally. Sub adult males of the species take their time to develop the combs and wattles and one of these guys that I ran into in Sattal ( Pics : 1 – 5 ) had me confused for a while about his gender. Noob that I was when I met him, I thought the combs and wattles were standard on all members of the species like in the case of the domestics.

Nature’s system can be brutal at times but it also provides and the evolutionary change of the Red Jungle Fowl is prime example of how. The evolution of the Jungle Fowl into a much larger bird that cannot live as long and neither survive by itself while providing for what is needed from it has saved many a species from heading down the road to extinction. We’ve domesticated other birds but none else took the evolutionary route of the Chicken. Ducks and Peacocks are found in the same forests that the Red Jungle Fowl roams in and these species have been domesticated as well. Yet none of them have evolved into a parallelly existing species like the Chicken and Red Jungle Fowl. Both are now distinct species with different strengths and different purposes. The Chicken has evolved as fodder for humans and the Red Jungle Fowl is all the more better for it as are all Pheasants and ground dwelling animals if you actually think about it given the sheer explosion of the Human population. All of us people gotta eat and Mother Nature handed us the solution to our protein requirement problem as she always has with most of our problems. Now, naysayers may say that nature had nothing to do with domestication and it was all human ingenuity but there again they fail to realize that Man is a part of nature as well. Every intelligence and idea on this planet is natural. We cannot go and visit nature because we are all Nature whether we like it or not and that’s the bottom line that so many of us just cannot grasp.

The Red Jungle Fowl has given us a sub species that’s pretty much kept us alive and we all should be eternally thankful to this bird for it and yet we dismiss it because it looks common. Pretty ungrateful if you ask me but then these facts are sadly not taught in our education system as they should be in my opinion. Personally, Im still waiting to catch a few pictures of these gorgeous birds out in their breeding plumage, in good light and up on an elevation for a while now. It’s too bad that most forest trails aren’t usually that way but one can hope. Ill’ let you know if I manage score those beauties for sure.