Tag: chicken

Wikipedia says: The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult male bird, and younger male may be called a cockerel. A male that has been castrated is a capon. An adult female bird is called a hen and a sexually immature female is called a pullet.

Originally raised for cockfighting or for special ceremonies, chickens were not kept for food until the Hellenistic period (4th–2nd centuries BC). Humans now keep chickens primarily as a source of food (consuming both their meat and eggs) and as pets.

Genetic studies have pointed to multiple maternal origins in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, but the clade found in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa originated from the Indian subcontinent. From ancient India, the chicken spread to Lydia in western Asia Minor, and to Greece by the 5th century BC. Fowl have been known in Egypt since the mid-15th century BC, with the “bird that gives birth every day” having come from the land between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Thutmose III.