If numbers were power, chickens would rule the animal kingdom. With over 35 billion of them roaming Earth, the population of Gallus domesticus outnumbers humans 3.5 to 1. But it’s not just about quantity. The ground-dwelling fowl have proven themselves adaptable survivors, too, persisting through droughts and famines that’ve wiped out other species. As far as farm animals go, chickens are the most docile and delicious livestock one could ever ask for. Same goes for their eggs. Since their domestication 8000 years ago, no other bird has proven to be more important to our livelihood than the chicken, yet no other bird is so mocked and ridiculed.
It hasn’t always been this way.
The Ancient Romans revered chickens, going so far as to consider them soothsayers. There’s even a name for it—Alectromancy (from the Greek alectyron for ‘rooster’ and manteia for ‘divination’), and the practice influenced every facet of life in the Roman Empire. The Senate regularly consulted hens for decisions on everything from military strategy to the weather. The process of Alectromancy was a complex one featuring extraordinary levels of organisation, but most involved a ritual whereupon a large circle which was divided into parts of the alphabet. Corn was carefully spread in each segment. Then, the fowl were placed in the middle and the pullularius, (“the keeper of the chickens”) interpreted the pattern left by their pecking. The results were highly anticipated by the Emperor.
Birds of all kinds played a prominent role in the arts of the Roman Empire, too. The poet Ovid features sparrows and nightingales throughout his Metamorphosis to represent both transformation and the consequence of our actions. Likewise, in Virgil’s epic Aeneid, it is swans, considered sacred by Venus, that fend off the hostility of Jupiter’s eagles and consequently save Aeneas.
The Ancient Greeks were likewise fascinated by our feathered friends. Sappho’s first poem, An Ode to Aphrodite opens with the speaker invoking the goddess Aphrodite, described as arriving in a chariot pulled by sparrows. Despite their delicate physique, the Greeks believed birds—especially the chicken—possessed immense material and spiritual strength. Thus, it comes as no surprise that several of Aesop’s Fables depict lions who are afraid of hens. Because of their association with powerful gods like Athena and Ares, chickens were rarely eaten by those in the upper strata of Greek society, though it’s said their eggs were fair game.
Yet the chicken’s esteemed reputation wasn’t confined to the lands of Aristotle and Caesar. Word of their power managed to spread to every corner of civilisation, ascending as a mighty symbol representing both good and evil. In Norse mythology, for example, the crowing of a rooster foretells natural disasters. Across another continent, though, within the Chinese Zodiac, it is said fowls represent both bravery and good luck. The religious significance of the bird is evident in the West, too, where we find long-documented use of them for ritual sacrifices in various African and Latin American folklore, along with Judaism, too, whereupon in rabbinic literature you might find the Hebrew word geber means both “rooster” and “strong man”. No matter where we look in history, if we look hard enough, there’s evidence of the chicken’s influence.
In the United States, though, the bird’s name has long been synonymous with a panic-stricken cowardice. One “plays chicken” to determine who will retreat first. Or, if you’re too frightened to even play, you’ll “chicken out.” Yet, if chickens run from the first sight of us, they have good reason to. Poultry is the most consumed meat in the United States, and over twenty-four million hens are killed every day to satisfy that demand (two hundred million are slaughtered globally). Factory farms—which supply nearly eighty per cent of the poultry landing on the plates of most American families—resort to the most efficient—and therefore least humane—methods. Typically, this includes the “live shackle” scenario, when the chickens, often insufficiently stunned and thus justly terrified, are hung upside down in a processing line before being submerged in vats of boiling water to loosen their feathers for removal.
Other birds, though—the prettier, high-flying ones not eaten by humans—live a different kind of life. A serene one. Where they are admired. Protected. Cherished, even. The peacock comes to mind here, strutting around with all his shimmering, vibrant plumage. Same goes for the exotic, large-billed toucan. Even the common, lavender-crested blue jay commands our attention. Because these are the kind of birds we like to see. The ones you might spot on a calendar. Then there are the ones we like to hear. The melodic warbler. The dulcet lark. The sweet starling. Who hasn’t relished their melodies rising through the woods? It should come as no surprise to us that all species of songbirds are protected by Federal Law. Yet, out of all of our safeguarded birds, the one that stands out most to me is the one we rarely see and never hear: the Bald Eagle.
If a chicken bolts from the first sight of danger, then our Bald Eagle is the courageous action-hero of winged animals. Here in the United States, we’re so used to seeing the image of one with their outstretched wings, clutching an olive branch and a bundle of arrows, it’s hard to imagine the country ever existing without them. But even the most pictured bird in America hasn’t always been held in such high regard. At least, not by likes of Benjamin Franklin, who, in a 1784 letter to his daughter, called it a “bird of bad moral character,” who was “too lazy to fish for himself.” Instead, Franklin insisted on the turkey as the feathered representative for our nation, “a bird of courage,” though he conceded, one that could also be, “a little vain and silly.”
Franklin’s sentiments reflect a strange tendency by humans to project a wide array of human traits on birds. The peaceful dove. The focused hawk. The wise owl. The list goes on and on. But the flip side of adulation is ridicule, and none receive more than chickens.
Yet despite the fact they’re such an important part of our diet—and therefore our lives—most of us know very little about them. Perhaps it’s the case of what happens when the better-tasting something is, the less we care where it came from.
Modern day chickens (Gallus gallus) belong to an order of birds that survived the Cretaceus Oaleogene Extinction Event approximately 66 million years ago. The cataclysm—theorised to have been caused by a large asteroid—wiped out three quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth. Because they were small, ground-dwelling birds, fowl like ducks and quail avoided the impact of the blast that killed their branch-perching cousins. The chickens we see today are descendants of the Red Junglefowl, an omnivorous bird hailing from Thailand. In domesticating the chicken 8000 years ago, humans took advantage of their ancestor’s ability to reproduce exponentially when provided with an ample food supply.
Perhaps, like the turkey, we give the chicken less respect because she cannot fly to the height of other birds. Compared to the eagle—a bird Tennyson called “ a lightning bolt falling from the sky”—the waddling hen appears ready-made for derision. But, like so many other things readily subject to scorn, they offer much more than we give them credit for. A study out of Stanford University, for example, demonstrated chickens can manipulate tools, remember faces, even show empathy. One wonders how many of these traits the average human displays on a daily basis. Perhaps the more faults we find in other animals the less we see in ourselves. If this is the case, then we have nothing to crow about.
The Stanford study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting “Bird Brain” ought to be a compliment. During a similar study in Animal Cognition, researchers observed chickens demonstrating self-control, self-awareness, even complex, “Machiavellian-like social interactions”. Many of these traits, they noted, are not found in other domesticated vertebrae such as canines and horses.
The six chickens living in our backyard don’t give us lottery numbers. They don’t seem to get along much, either. Just when you think they’re living as one harmonious flock, I’ll toss in a treat and watch in dismay as one snatches it gleefully out of the mouth of another. Yet, at the end of the day, when it’s dark and cold and the only light is from the moon against the frosty grass, there in the coop all of them are bundled so close together sharing their collective warmth it’s hard to tell where one feather ends and another begins. No matter what happens during the day, no matter how different the breed, all of them survive the night by sticking together.
I think we could all learn a thing or two from our downy friends.
In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic horror film The Birds, hawks, crows and seagulls mount a large-scale attack on humans in San Francisco that overwhelms the city and terrifies its residents. Then, abruptly, without explanation, they stop, leaving no doubt the assault was deliberate. Yet while the film leaves the motive of the birds up for interpretation, Hitchcock conceded the film showed what can happen if humans take nature for granted.
Charles Darwin is known for his pioneering research on finches on the Galapagos Islands, but once he returned to England, the pigeon was the bird that occupied most of his time. He purportedly found them so beautiful and graceful he opted to breed them in his London home. Darwin kept many as pets, too and, when his The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication came out in 1868, he dedicated two chapters of the book on pigeons, describing variations among them, “astonishing,” while making sure they occupied the most beautifully illustrated section of the book.
Perhaps the value we place on their appearance explains our reluctance to give birds credit for their intelligence. In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes, “party-colored birds full of iridescence.” John Audubon, one of the first naturalists to acknowledge the complex world of birds, observes a duck in his Birds of America floating on a lake with an, “elevated head glittering with emerald green.” It should come as no surprise then, that the birds that catch our eyes get the most attention from us. A cursory glance at the “Most Wanted” list on birdguides.com reveals names like the Siberian Rubythroat, the Yellow-Rumped Flowerpecker, the Golden Oriole, and the Black-Browed Albatross.
Bird-Watching experienced a boost in popularity during the Covid lockdowns and has shown no signs of slowing down since. The U.S. Fish and Game estimates around 96 million Americans partake in the hobby every year. Like every hobby—model trains, stamp collecting and beekeeping—the closer one looks at it, the weirder it gets. Even still, birdwatching might be the weirdest of them all. No matter how rare the bird out there might be, the idea of a man with binoculars lurking in the bushes will always strike me as creepy.
Yet while the odds are in the favour for Gallus Domesticus sticking around for a while, many of her feathered friends have not been so lucky. Habitat loss and hunting by humans have caused the extinction of about 1400 bird species. Efforts to protect endangered populations faces resistance from both deforestation and overfishing. Meanwhile, approximately two-thirds of the North American population are at risk of disappearing due to rising global temperatures.
Albert Camus once described a grey mass of seagulls perched on rocks in the sea as “luminous floating cemeteries.” Whether or not these are reserved for us depends on our priorities as a species. If we hope to last as long as Gallus Gallus, how we treat the life around—and above us—must rank at the top.
