Thoughts on the Evolutionary Success of the Domestic Chicken (Gallus Gallus)

Whilst eating a teriyaki chicken burger yesterday it occurred to me that from a evolutionary point of view, chickens are a wildly successful species. I cannot think of any other bird that exists in the numbers and with the truly global range that chickens have. There are in the neighbourhood of eight billion chickens on Earth. They are the only bird that can be found on every single continent, including Antarctica. No other bird can match that.

Chickens have found a niche that ensures their survival as a species that in the mere twenty-thousand or so years it has been around that has elevated them just another humble bird living in the forests of India to spreading across the entire globe. The simple secret to the success of this species success is providing tasty eggs and being being tasty to humans.

Of course, for individual chickens this mostly doesn't work out too well, but it unambiguously has allowed the species to flourish in a way it would not have otherwise. There is the argument that it is not a "natural" niche because it is dependant on humans, but that presumes that our species is somehow "unnatural", which is a premise that I reject. We evolved into what we are and to do what we do just the same as every other animal.