Red Junglefowl

The red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) is a large tropical game fowl from the Phasianidae family. The junglefowl is closely related to pheasants, grouse, quail, partridges, and other such birds of the pheasant family. Wild junglefowl lives in a swath of south Asia and Indochina which runs from Tamil Nadu east to the southern parts of China and includes the Philippines and Indonesia.

These birds display strong sexual dimorphism.  The hen tends to be a drab brownish color with a hint of red on her face—[erfect for blending into the dense jungle.  Yet one look at the resplendent male with his iridescent green tail feathers, burnished yellow-orange back, and brilliant scarlet comb & wattle reveals a critical truth about the junglefowl: this is the progenitor chicken—the wild species from which all of our many beautiful and delicious chicken breeds descend.  Geneticists tell us there may be a dash of gray junglefowl in there, but the domestic chicken is really effectively the same bird.

Indeed, the wild junglefowl has the same “cock-a-doodle-doo” call and the same truculent streak (but more so, to equip him for living in the tiger-haunted jungles of Indochina).  Not only does he have excellent vision and a needle-sharp beak, the jungle rooster is also equipped with sickle-like spurs on his legs for self-protection and fighting for mates.  Junglefowl are primarily seed eaters, but they opportunistically eat fruit, insects, small reptiles, and mammals.  Cocks exhibit a courting behavior known as “tidbitting.”  If they find a food source in the presence of a hen, they cluck coaxingly, bob their head, and pick up and drop the food in offering to the female.

Roosters live by Highlander’s  “there can be only one” credo, and fight each other to the death if they come across each other.  Junglefowl can apparently live longer than 15 years in captivity, but it doesn’t seem like they attain such old age often in the competitive and dangerous jungles where they occur naturally.  They enjoy bathing in dust, are capable of short burst of flight to escape predators or reach roosting sites.  The female exclusively broods her eggs and cares for the chicks.

Ironically purebred junglefowl are starting to vanish from the world due to hybridization with feral domestic chickens. But it takes an ornithologist to tell junglefowl from feral domestic chickens anyway (since they are effectively the same animal), so I am not going to stress about this too much.  It seems like chickens at least might be here to stay awhile.

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