
The chicken first crossed the road in Southeast Asia, landmark gene study finds - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/chicken-first-crossed-road-southeast-asia-landmark-gene-study-finds
======
pvaldes
There are four species of Gallus. Only one, the red jungle fowl hens, became
the mother of modern chicken, in several places at the same time, but the
history is more complicated than that.

Indonesian for example have an endemic species, the green one, and are fond of
producing red+green hybrids for navigation at open sea [1]. Green is the
oldest species and does not live in China.

Then we have the chicken skin. Plucked chicken are typically yellow. Only a
few chicken breeds have black skin, they are all black in fact, black beak,
legs, caruncles, crest, inner organs and even black bones

But when we think in a plucked modern chicken is yellow. This is because the
grey species, from India, provided the yellow gene. Therefore all (or almost)
chicken that you can buy in the market have indian blood. Grey (and Ceylon's
wildfowl) are endemic from Indian continent. And any study that is not
sampling this areas would be incomplete.

The red was adapted to rainforest but is a species from bamboo cloud forests
also in the mountains, so provided the cold resistance gene, and won in the
battle being the easiest to breed.

[1] Each rooster has a different song that is really loud and unique from this
animal. People go fishing with their pet rooster and thus can locate the
position of all other people easily even in dense fog or open sea.

~~~
coderintherye
Wow, rooster identification as sort of a "Marco-Polo" is rather ingenious.

~~~
pvaldes
Yes but this couldn't be done with the red. The green junglefowl is a mangrove
species, so was particularly well suited for the fishermen lifestyle. It feeds
on fishes, starfishes and marine animal's carcasses stranded in beaches and
can survive without drinking freshwater for a longer time. Is perfect for long
distance open sea travel and to colonize small isolate islands without
permanent sources of freshwater

Araucanas, ameraucanas and olive eggers have its blood. It provided the genes
for blue and green eggs.

------
cmrdporcupine
Every winter, looking at our chickens roosting in their unheated coop at -15C,
I marvel at the ability of the descendant of a bird from the tropics to
survive in a Canadian winter.

But then I remember that my species comes from eastern Africa...

~~~
markdown
I imagine that chickens had to adapt to the cold much much much faster than
humans had to.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
I live in the UK and I am amazed that date palms do well here, in a country
with much higher rainfall and it does get colder than the middle east. Also
agaves seem quite happy (what tequila is made out of.

What's actually more surprising than cold tolerance is that water tolerance;
desert-y plants tend to be adapted to be needing periods where their roots are
dry for long periods. Let them stand with wet feet and many desert plants get
very upset.

I guess the middle east was wetter even in roman times, so perhaps that
answers part of that.

To flip the chicken question around a bit, it's perhaps odd that chickens can
cope not with the cold but with their native heat so well, what with wearing a
full-body, heavy down jacket all the time in their native tropical jungle.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Chickens molt! They rid themselves of the feathers and down periodically.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
And then they grow them back again I presume. In the middle of a jungle
forest. It seems odd.

------
SeanLuke
I am confused. I thought it was long established that the chicken came from SE
Asia. Why is this article a "landmark study"?

~~~
ksaj
I just mentioned this article to my Vietnamese partner, and got a lengthy
story about how the modern chicken came from SE Asian pheasants, which are
often referred to as "jungle chickens," as taught 30+ years ago in primary
school.

So it's pretty clear that there are generations of children who were well
aware of the connection, too. There must be something hidden in the details
that would raise this study to the lofty level of "landmark."

~~~
aspaceman
Maybe it provided genetic evidence for this human oral history? I would
consider that landmark personally. Although writing an article about it is
harder.

------
jshprentz
Unanswered is the question of where and when a chicken would first have an
opportunity to cross a road. The article reports that researchers traced
chickens genetically back to southeast Asian pheasants domesticated around
7500 BCE. Beyond the title, the article mentions nothing about roads. At what
point in history did some trails and paths become roads?

~~~
masklinn
There were stone-paved streets in Harappa and Ur, circa 4000BCE. There's also
evidence of _log roads_ in England appearing between 4000 BCE and 3800BCE.

Brick paving appeared in India around 3000BCE.

By 2000 BCE, the "leading edge" roads had become quite advanced: Minos had
tens of kilometers worth of roads which were not just paved but mortared, on
thick subgrade, with side-drains and distinct shoulders, and anatolian roads
had sidewalks.

~~~
mrlonglong
And the Romans perfected the art of building long and straight roads, some of
which still are in use today.

~~~
TomMarius
Mostly just the same place, though. Even the terrain around it is probably
very different.

~~~
samatman
Ah yes, the Road of Theseus problem.

~~~
mrlonglong
Is it the same road if it is renumbered ?

------
tibbydudeza
I wonder how far the Chickenosaurus project is coming along.

~~~
scorecard
There is progress toward Jurassic Park. 1\. Gene edits turn a bill into
something like a dinosaur snout:
[https://www.livescience.com/50886-scientific-progress-
dino-c...](https://www.livescience.com/50886-scientific-progress-dino-
chicken.html) 2\. early birds may have been baby dinosaurs that stopped
developing, yet could produce off spring, according to another recent DNA
study I can't locate at the moment. Now if that development process could be
turned back on in a bird ...

~~~
mirimir
> 2\. early birds may have been baby dinosaurs that stopped developing, yet
> could produce off spring, according to another recent DNA study I can't
> locate at the moment.

And early humans may have been baby ~chimpanzees that stopped developing, yet
could produce offspring :)

------
econcon
Doesn't it make sense that flying dragons fossils are often found in South
East Asia so chickens appeared there?

------
monadic2
I’m fairly sure this hypothesis predates Darwin.

------
fortran77
The question isn't when. It's _why_.

------
partyboat1586
Thought this was an Onion headline at first.

------
kinghtown
I guess this is why Korean and Taiwanese fried chicken is the best.

~~~
quicklime
I don't follow, Korea and Taiwan are not part of South-East Asia?

~~~
kinghtown
I really need to read links before posting any comments. My bad. (Taiwan’s
fried chicken is still really amazing.)

~~~
ksaj
Yes people should read the links before commenting, lest they end up sounding
like capricious idiots. But this was in the title.

~~~
dang
Please don't be a jerk on HN, regardless of what somebody else did or didn't
read.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
sysrpl
Why did the chicken cross the road?

The next time someone asks you this question, you can give them the following
answer.

The question "Why did the chicken cross the road" is invalid. It is invalid
because "why" assumes that the chicken had some reason for taking the action
"cross the road". This, in turn, assumes that the chicken has the concept of
"road"; after all, if the chicken doesn't know that the road is there, then
the chicken did not - from the chickens point of view - cross the road, and
consequently it is meaningless to ask for its motivations for doing so.

Since chicken is an animal, it is unlikely that it has the concept of road in
the same sense than humans do; since it is a bird, whose ancestors were
propably capable of flight in the near past, it is unlikely to have the
concept of road in any sense - why would a flying bird need roads?

Therefore, the chicken can never have any motivation for crossing the road,
since from the chickens point of view, it never does any such thing. It simply
moves from one point to another, and these points happen to be on the opposite
side of a flat area of ground. No road-crossing has happened.

Think of it this way: if you walk over a scent trail left by some animal, and
you don't know that the trail is there, it is foolish to ask your motives of
crossing that trail. One can ask your motives for walking in the first place,
but the crossing was pure coincidence and not something you chose.

~~~
baddox
> "why" assumes that the chicken had some reason for taking the action "cross
> the road".

I don’t think so. It’s pretty normal to ask “why” questions about non-
conscious entities. “Why does my stomach hurt?” “Why is the sky blue?” And so
on.

~~~
cgriswald
Does a chicken have consciousness? If so, when talking about conscious beings,
are we using why in the sense that we use it when asking why the sky is blue?

~~~
baddox
I don’t think it even necessarily matters whether the chicken is sufficiently
conscious. If we asked “why does the chicken have a red comb?” it would be
clear we weren’t asking for an explanation of the chicken’s conscious choices.

~~~
cgriswald
Sure, but I think if I ask “Why did you do that?” I’m specifically asking for
an explanation related to your consciousness rather than a physical
explanation. That’s a different sort of question than “Why are you six feet
tall?”

I asked if chickens are conscious because, if the chicken _is_ conscious (or
at least if the question asker believes they are) than we’re asking the first
sort of question and it may or may not be fair to call that question invalid
based on a chicken’s conscious understanding and sysrpl’s reasoning.

If it’s not, then we can only reasonably ask the second kind of question and I
agree it wouldn’t be “invalid” to do so.

