The History of the Chicken
The story begins 10,000 years ago in a jungle in Asia and ends today in kitchens all over the world
Chicken as the universal food of our era, crossing cultural boundaries with ease. With its mild taste and uniform texture, chicken presents a blank canvas for the national flavours of almost any cuisine. However, until the introduction of large-scale industrial production in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional contribution of chickens was small. Chickens were considered as domestic birds that were useful to humanity, but unlike other animals such as the horse or the ox, they did little to change the course of history. Nonetheless, the chicken has inspired contributions to culture, art, cuisine, science and religion over the millennia. Chickens were, and still are, a sacred animal in some cultures. The hen is a worldwide symbol of nurturing and fertility. The rooster is a universal sign of masculinity.
The domesticated chicken has a complicated family tree, stretching back 10,000 years. Recent DNA testing has shown that the chicken's wild ancestor is the red junglefowl. The bird's resemblance to modern chickens is seen in the red feathers on top of its head, the red flesh around its mouth, and its distinctive call in the morning. The females of this breed protect their eggs in the same way modern-day chickens do, and they make the same clucking sounds. In its habitat, which stretches from northeastern India to the Philippines, the red junglefowl looks on the forest floor for insects, seeds and fruit and flies up to nest in the trees at night. That's about as much flying as it can manage, a trait that made it relatively easy for humans to capture and domesticate it. But the red junglefowl is not the sole ancestor of the modern chicken. Scientists have identified three closely related species that might have bred with the red junglefowl. Precisely how much genetic material these other birds contributed to the DNA of domesticated chickens is unknown. However, recent research suggests that modern chickens inherited at least one trait, their yellow skin, from the grey junglefowl of southern India.
Once chickens were domesticated, cultural contacts, trade, migration and territorial conquest resulted in their introduction to different regions around the world over several thousand years. Chickens arrived in Egypt in around 1750 BC, as fighting birds and additions to zoos. Drawings of the birds decorated royal tombs, which contained the treasures that the kings and queens would take to the afterlife. Yet it would be another 100 years before the bird became popular among ordinary Egyptians.
It was in that era that Egyptians mastered the technique of artificial incubation, which freed hens to lay more eggs. This was not easy. Most chicken eggs will hatch in three weeks, but only if the temperature remains at around 38 degrees Celsius. The eggs must also be turned three to five times a day, and the humidity must remain stable at about 55 percent, otherwise physical deformities can result, or the eggs won't hatch. The Egyptians constructed vast complexes of large rooms, which were essentially ovens, and these were connected to a series of corridors and vents that allowed attendants to regulate the heat from fires. The egg attendants kept their methods a secret from outsiders for centuries.
Around the Mediterranean, archaeologists have uncovered chicken bones from about 800 BC. Chickens were a delicacy among the Romans, whose culinary innovations included the omelette, and the practice of stuffing birds for cooking. European farmers began developing methods to fatten the birds, such as feeding them bread which had been soaked in wine. But the chicken's status in Europe appears to have diminished with the collapse of Rome. In the period after the fall of the Roman Empire, chicken farms vanished and the birds returned to the size they had been 1,000 years earlier.
Well into the 20th century chickens, although valued as a source of eggs, played a relatively minor role in diet and the economy. Long after cattle had entered the industrial age of centralized and mechanized large-scale production, chicken production was still mostly a small-scale local enterprise. The breakthrough that made today's huge bird farms possible was the inclusion of antibiotics, along with a mixture of different vitamins, in the food chickens ate. This allowed chickens to be raised indoors and be protected from cold temperatures and heavy rain as well as predators. This factory farming represents the chicken's final step in its transformation into a big protein-producing business.
Factory farms turning out an increasing amount of chicken have resulted in an increasing demand. Modern chickens are cogs in a system designed to convert grain into protein with staggering efficiency. It takes less than 1 kilogram of feed to produce 400 grams of chicken. By comparison, around 3 kilograms of feed are required to produce 400 grams of beef. A day-old chick can be turned into a 2 kilogram bird in six weeks - half the time it took two generations ago.
Chickens also make wonderful pets, as breeders will tell you. They are as colourful as tropical fish but more affectionate, as cute as guinea pigs and better at catching mice than cats. In the USA, exotic and heritage breeds of chicken are being sold for considerable sums of money as the fashion for keeping chickens in the backyard becomes more popular.
All in all, the globe-spanning chicken is an epic story of evolutionary, agricultural and culinary success, outnumbering human beings on the planet by nearly three to one.
Intelligent behaviour in birds
Many people are aware of the intelligence of chimpanzees and other mammals. However, birds also demonstrate intelligent behaviour
A For centuries, many scholars maintained that humans were the only intelligent organism on Earth. Many traits were considered to be exclusively human examples of acumen for example, language, tool use, deception, awareness of self and others. However, exciting new research on a number of animals, particularly birds, has called into question the uniqueness of these traits, forcing us to reconsider this opinion. In 1964, people were amazed when naturalist Jane Goodall first discovered chimpanzees making and using tools. But ornithologists, people who study birds, were not overly surprised. Almost 20 years earlier, a renowned ornithologist had shown that tool use was commonplace in populations of woodpecker finches residing on the Galápagos Islands. These tiny birds routinely used twigs to extract grubs from under bark.
B Since then, the catalogue of tool-using animals has grown. At least three Australian bird species make tools similar to those of the woodpecker finch, and when white-winged choughs come across shellfish they have been known to use rocks as hammers to crack open the recalcitrant shells. Other birds show a more sophisticated level of insight. For example, black kites have been reported dropping bait into lakes to bring fish to the surface of the water, thereby making them easier to catch. A kite may also pick up a smouldering stick from an area recently burned by a bushfire and drop the stick on a patch of unburned grass. The bird then feasts on the small animals that flee from the subsequent fire.
C Most tool-using behaviours are a means of extracting food, which may provide a clue as to how the mental abilities needed for tool use evolved. The predominant explanation is based on the proverb that 'necessity is the mother of invention'. Essentially, brain tissue is energetically expensive, so animals should have evolved only the necessary intellectual capabilities required to overcome the challenges they face in their environment. Consider a hypothetical duck grazing on a seemingly endless supply of grass. Being particularly intelligent will not help the duck eat more grass. In contrast, other species, such as birds of prey, live in a more challenging environment, where food may be distributed erratically, hidden from view or highly mobile. The food itself may be quite intelligent. So, if there are not enough resources to feed all individuals, then only the smartest in each generation will live and reproduce.
D New Caledonian crows boast many different tools in their tool kit. They use a hooked tool made by removing all but one of the side branches from a twig. They fashion serrated rakes (using their beaks as scissors) from stiff, leathery pandanus leaves. They also make probes by modifying their own moulted feathers. Each tool is used in slightly different ways to pull grubs from deep within tree trunks. The crows carry their favourite tool from one foraging site to the next. They also store their tools for later re-use in a secure place on their perch. Problem-solving abilities have traditionally been thought to be beyond the reach of animals. Nevertheless, birds are coming up with innovative solutions all the time. Recently, New Caledonian crows were observed moulding a piece of wire, something they had never seen before, into a hook and then using it to retrieve food.
E Literally hundreds of such reports have accumulated in back copies of scientific journals. Recently, a team of biologists from McGill University in Canada collated them and compared the frequency and size of innovations with the size of the birds' forebrain (the brain-area responsible for higher-order information processing) relative to the hindbrain. The team uncovered a clear relationship: birds with relatively large forebrains are able to invent fresh solutions to ecological challenges, and to exploit the discoveries and inventions of others, more often than birds with relatively small forebrains.
F Intelligence in birds may also arise as a result of selection to overcome the dynamic challenges of communal living. Since this involves competition between group members, to be successful, a social animal may need to be able to reflect on its own intentions, as well as those of others. The consequence of being part of a community may be the evolution of a distinctly 'political' brain.
G What better way to exercise a political brain than to be deceitful! Perhaps the best example of deception among birds comes from the white-winged choughs. Choughs are cooperative breeders - that is, they form a communal group consisting of one breeding-pair and up to 15 non-breeding 'helpers'. However, because young choughs have so little enthusiasm for foraging, or gathering food, they are often too hungry to help. And because it is socially unacceptable to be part of a group and provide little help, young choughs often act deceptively. For example, when an adult is watching, a young chough will place some food in the mouth of a hungry chick but it does not release the food. Instead, it waits until the adult departs and then eats it. A chough can also help the group by preening the chicks. Interestingly, it is more likely to preen the chicks if another bird can see it do so. A chough that has been sitting totally still on the nest while the rest of the group is foraging out of sight will comically spring up and frantically start to preen the chicks as soon as some of its group members come into view. It is likely that these young choughs are only motivated to help when others are watching because they are concerned about their social status. Choughs need other choughs to like them as they cannot breed without them.
Crossing the Threshold
The renovated Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand unites old and new, creating an irresistible urge to step inside
Architects are finding it very difficult in today's cultural landscape. The profession faces a three-way threat; a public that apparently doesn't understand what architects do, developers who couldn't care less what they do, and overbearing councils micromanaging every single aspect of what they do. According to sources within the architectural profession, the situation is much worse when architects work on municipal buildings, as architects FJMT and Archimedia discovered with their Auckland Gallery makeover, where a vast number of external pressures threatened the project, and with so many bureaucratic difficulties it looked doomed to fail.
The major challenge of the gallery renovation project was that it involved two parts. The first was to restore the heritage building, dating back to 1888, which contained a network of small spaces, refurbished so often it contained 17 different floor heights. The second was to deliver a new extension that would not only double floor and exhibition space but also attract new patrons, a total necessity. While the old building's circulation was off-putting, so was something intangible yet just as powerful; its atmosphere. For many, Auckland Art Gallery was just an old building that served a limited range of patrons with highbrow interests, missing its chance to engage with new audiences.
A 2003 survey of young people's impressions of the gallery confirmed this opinion, sounding more like references to an abandoned building. For the survey authors, 'threshold fear' — where certain groups are intimidated from entering certain spaces by their off-putting atmosphere — was the institution's undoing, something no architect wants anything to do with. For those young people Auckland Art Gallery was undemocratic, 'dusty' and 'cold' — the epitome of threshold fear. Also, 16% of the sample group had no idea where it even was, despite being interviewed on the pavement right outside it. Clearly, the gallery was fatally out of step at a time when New Zealand's national museum in Wellington was successfully engaging broader audiences with contemporary branding and marketing, interactive displays and temporary events.
The decision to evolve the gallery was actually made in 2000, although it took eight years for building to commence, as the architects fought off heritage committees and conservationists trying to stop them. The architects were not just dealing with a disillusioned public, but also with precious timber and the parkland which surrounds the building. Pushing the design through the Environment Court, the body which approves renovations of this scale, alone took three years. During this time the budget blew out by several million dollars, the funding dried up, and the new wing had to be completely redesigned. Even after the redesign, the use of kauri timber, with its significance to New Zealand's Māori people*, stirred up political debate. In the new building the architects have used kauri to produce a canopy with a curving interior roof supported by tapered, steel columns, also clad in kauri. The canopy represents a stag in full public face, its curvature filtering light to the forecourt to the west and creating a visual echo of the canopy of pohutukawa trees in Albert Park to the east. The park also has cultural significance to Māori as it was the site of early settlements.
The connection is reinforced by sculptures from Māori artist Arnold Wilson decorating the columns, while fellow artist Bernand Makoare was a consultant, ensuring the gallery emphasised Māori beliefs. Still that didn't stop the conservationist Stephen King from accusing the architects of "throwing" kauri at a "mediocre building" and of misappropriating the 'mana' (spiritual energy) of the precious material (which is almost extinct: harvesting of both petrified and swamp kauri has been likened to a gold rush). However, the kauri that was used here was from the forest floor, and King's misconceptions sum up the prejudice that surrounded the project.
Objections also came from the Auckland Regional Council, worrying about the extension's impact on Albert Park, yet the project's relationship with parkland is one of the most successful outcomes. Impact is not only minimal, but improves the park's social function. The extension's enormous glass atrium opens up the building by directing the gaze from street level to the parkland beyond, while inside, the new art space is fronted along the east by a continuous glass wall incorporating the park into the gallery. The glass becomes a 'screen' for viewing the outside world and makes the art accessible to those in the park, a far cry from both 'white cube' galleries worldwide, the plain boxes where paintings are hung in antiseptic white surroundings, and also the dusty impermeable Auckland Gallery of old.
Another success is the refurbishment of the heritage building, especially the Mackelvie Gallery, in disrepair after its characteristic early twentieth-century Edwardian decoration had been stripped out or walked away in previous renovations. Remarkably the Mackelvie space has been reconstructed from two old photos, although the problem of multiple floor levels was so serious that scaffolding had to be erected at the highest level, with work progressing downwards, the reverse of normal practice. When it was over, a fascinating detail was retained: the lowest level visible under glass embedded in the new floor. The building itself as artwork, while elsewhere columns from the old gallery have been exposed in the walls of the new wing.
In 2008 the gallery averaged just 190,000 visitors annually. After reopening, it had 300,000 in five months. Cynics will chalk that up to novelty of the new, but the fact is the gallery is now an alluring cultural space which is crawling with young people.
*Māori: an indigenous people who were already living in New Zealand when Europeans arrived.
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