The Curious Cocktail

“Remember what the dormouse said…”

Waking up to the loud call of the chicken (Gallus domesticus) is so common for us that even clocks come with prerecorded calls as alarm. The call belongs to the male fowl, the cock – it is the quintessential bird and the omnipresent sound of the Indian countryside. It is only when you have lived long enough in the countryside that you realise this call is not typical of mornings. It is driven more by the presence of the hens around, and if there is a brood around, a cock might sing all night. Today, the koo-kuduk-koo of the chicken is recognized more by a watch’s alarm and the chicken itself for what it is – food – than for its historic association with humans.

This history is quite interesting, an important chapter in the book of mankind, no less: How the hunter-gatherers observed wild fowl life history to not only hunt – they are still hunted – but to capture them live and breed and tame them and keep them around settlements which are found to this day in the South and Southeast Asia, the homeland of the junglefowls. The domestication process that requires selective breeding and care started about 10,000 years ago, with genetic studies pointing to a single domestication event of the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) somewhere in the region of southwestern China, Myanmar, and northern Thailand (863 genomes reveal the origin and domestication of chicken - PMC). Subsequently, the domesticated bird spread with the peoples to South Asia about 8,000 years ago, and bred with three other species of junglefowls in the South and Southeast Asia.

A very handsome domestic fowl from Northeast India

The breeding with wild populations further added certain characteristics to the domestic birds. The typical yellow skin of chickens, for instance, is a result of a recessive allele that jumped into the domestic population not from the Red Junglefowl but the Grey Junglefowl (Gallus sonneratii) (Identification of the Yellow Skin Gene Reveals a Hybrid Origin of the Domestic Chicken - PMC). It is thus established from earlier studies that the domestic fowls, the chickens, mated freely with their wild ancestors (The wild species genome ancestry of domestic chickens - PMC), even as domestication process created various breeds of chicken. The poultry farms of layers and broilers were bred in the 20^th century, the industry started in 1923 by one Cecile Long Steele in Sussex County, and subsequently selection for egg-laying and muscles took precedence over colours, turning the effervescent colourful fowl into a white unhurried chicken.

In India chickens are privately owned but range freely since as long as one can remember. Even today, even as poultry farms of layers and broilers dot the countryside, free-ranging chicken are the norm, referred to as desi murga or local chicken. They feed on fallen seeds and scratch the ground for insects and worms. They roost in the granary or stored hay and form their own harem, comprising several hens and chicks led by a cock. Often times, the younger cocks venture out of the group to mingle with others, when a fight ensues if there is a worthy opponent.

A very handsome Red Junglefowl from Northeast India (Kaziranga Tiger Reserve)

The Jungli Murga, on the other hand, is the more quiet, demure bird of the forests. The Red is found over much of peninsular to Northeast India and the Grey over the southern and the eastern non-arid regions. Both are common in the natural habitats. On a walk through the forests, away from human settlements, the cocks are likely to be seen scampering away from the mere sight of us – a flight mechanism orchestrated by humanity’s generational inclination to hunt them. A harem might be seen once in a while, but these are small, only a pair or three and rarely four at a time – led by the cock.

A Red Junglefowl hen with a fish in Kaziranga Tiger Reserve

The best sign of a junglefowl’s presence in forests is the small clearing on the forest floor, usually close to an overhanging rock or buttress roots of a tree, where they rake leaves looking for stuff to eat – insects, worms, fruits and seeds – leaving the area clear of litter. While they are well-known omnivores, known to even eat small snakes, I saw a hen catch a fish in a small puddle and whip it before eating. Wherever hunting is not rampant, they are rather common to see and hear. At night, they roost up in shrubs or short trees, a habit also followed by free-ranging chicken. The call of the chicken is closer to that of the Red Junglefowl, which may sing at any time of the day or late into night, compared to that of the Grey Junglefowl, but no one has really studied the vocalisation of domestic and wild fowls to tell the difference.

The Grey and the Red Junglefowls of Central India (Satpuda and Kanha tiger reserves)

Both, the Red and the Grey, are similar in habits, but their distribution is curious. In Central India, one can roughly draw a straight line on a map distinguishing their distribution ranges between the towns of Chhatarpur to the north and Nagpur to the south. Despite significant overlaps, this invisible border seldom covers a large range in Central India. Very little, if anything, is known about this sympatric distribution, whether this leads to competition, hybridization, or nothing at all.

The Red Junglefowl cock raking through rhino dung and a hen by a beel in Kaziranga Tiger Reserve

The Northeast is home to the Red Junglefowl, observed commonly across the less disturbed regions. It is hard to miss their sunset orange and red in the greens of the Brahmaputra River woodlands, it is common to sight one raking rhino dung by the roadside. Curiously, I found the junglefowl of Manas Tiger Reserve to be shier than Kaziranga Tiger Reserve, and this could be because of varying hunting pressures in both the areas, but my observations are limited.

Quite naturally, they interact with their domestic counterparts which live in clusters of human settlements with large overlapping ranges and territories. Just as it is not uncommon for chicken to venture deeper into forests to forage, junglefowls also range around human settlements. This interface is where they interact. Little, again, is known of this interaction. Whether they compete for food and space, fight over territories and broods, are interactions we know little about. Except, perhaps, in the way they carry the signs themselves through phenotypic expression.

The curious thing about chickens is that they come in a range of colourations, no doubt passed down from their wild counterparts, but also through selective breeding by humans. The junglefowls, on the other hand, appear to not vary greatly in their patterns and form as well as behaviour. This uniform pattern is common to wild populations – they vary only little, or so I thought.

What I present here are observations of a naturalist, not a hardened birder with a thousand species on his belt. I have mostly failed to see and photograph the junglefowl – the cocks usually grab attention as they forage on the forest path, and the hens are always finicky. They are just too quick for my movements to point and shoot. But whenever they present themselves I take a picture.

A Central Indian wild cock with distinct white earlobes

Looking back at both, I found noticeable differences in their patterns. I found the cocks of Central India a tad rounder (if not bigger) than the Northeast India ones, their comb size varied too, with most Central Indian cocks having slightly larger combs, and distinct white earlobes which was absent or indistinct on the Northeast ones. These patterns became more apparent as I observed more such individuals in both the regions.

While I said most wild species show little variation, I accounted this to be a regional phenotypic expression, mostly naturally selected, because these are two distant populations of the same species. Then I started seeing chicken in their environment (not plate). I focused on some of the typical traits – comb, its size and colour, and the distinct patterns on feathers.

A Central Indian domestic cock showing distinct white earlobes

Interestingly, I found that the Central Indian cock shares the white earlobes with the domestic, while very few of the chicken of Northeast India show these, being entirely absent or inconspicuous among the Northeast Indian wild cocks. These similarities between the jungle and the wild cocks of both the places made me wonder if this is the result of hybridization with the domestic, not merely variations in populations.

Free-ranging chicken and junglefowls are known to interbreed since historic times – it started with the process of domestication itself. The running theory of today’s chicken is that it is a polyphyletic origin, where multiple species contributed to this hybrid variety (Genetics of the Fowl: The Classic Guide to Chicken Genetics and Poultry Breeding - F. B. Hutt - Google Books pp 5-12 makes for a very nice read). It is quite obvious that both interbreed even today, exchanging genes all the time, some of these exchanges are expressed phenotypically.

A Central Indian domestic cock with small and non-white earlobes

The two cocks pose two questions; first, what is the level of exchange between the jungle and the domestic fowl and second, which one of the two junglefowl populations is more hybridized. Both answers, right now, are speculations. For the first, it is difficult to say what the prevalent flow of genes is like – from wild to domestic or domestic to wild. From the way the wild cocks of Central India look, it appears that the hybridization is more in the wild population, even as the wild cocks certainly breed with domestic hens. In Northeast, the interactions are difficult to tell, it may be that the interactions have been limiting which is why the wild and the domestic don’t show too-many phenotypic traits, or that it is very prevalent which is why they both share smaller combs, small whites on the wattles, and longer neck feathers, but physical observations point to the former. Curiously, wild cocks mostly show slaty legs and the domestic yellow or brown or slaty in both geographies. In Assam, ‘local chicken’ is identified from broiler for having slaty legs.

A very shy Northeastern wild cock from Manas Tiger Reserve showing non-white earlobes

For the second, I theorize that the Central Indian wildfowl population is more hybridized with the domestic than the Northeast one – this is based on physical observations, and only genetic study can tell the real picture, but the resemblance of the Central India’s cocks to the domestic ones found here is uncanny, and the resemblance of the Central India cocks with Northeast India’s is quite different – the latter present a more complex case because their phenotypic expressions are more complicated to tease apart without genetic studies. But if this is the case, then finding out why is the holy grail of figuring out the contents of this curious cocktail.

A very determined forager - a domestic cock from Northeast India (Assam)

This may make one wonder, why worry about this cocktail? It has been happening for thousands of years. The difference lies in how one views the present in view of the past. Today, the wild populations are far smaller and restricted in small pockets of their historic ranges. The hybridization of the wild populations adds genes not required in the wild – some genetic expressions get carried on, changing not only appearance but eventually even affecting the fitness of the individual – say against a disease. While the undesirable genes might get removed due to survival of the fittest, the wild genes get replaced by domestic ones, removing their identity one at a time.

Such hybridization is already diluting wild gene pool of wild water buffalo by domestic buffaloes, wolves by dogs, and wild cats by domestic cats. Birds such as junglefowls represent an important study in how both interact – the need for studying such interactions and hybridizations are important when studying the epidemiology of avian diseases and zoonoses, a chapter in ecology that has so far received very little attention when studying hybridization.

While hunting and habitat loss already posing a threat to the junglefowls, their interaction with domestic counterparts is further putting their genetic fitness at risk of incorporating undesirable genes within the wild pool.

There is much to study to test these theories, of course. Looking at the two junglefowls of India, I am intrigued by how ecologies of widely occurring species are influenced at different scales at population-levels. This cocktail thus encompasses knowing how humans interact with the wilderness and how the wilderness interacts with humans.