Junglefowl Puns

So, pre-pandemic, I visited a Sri Lankan rainforest, and among the bird-sized spiders, burrowing scorpions, snakes, monitor lizards, leopards, and crocodiles, I came across several junglefowl. They’re roughly the size of a rooster, cannot fly, and (as per chickens) nest on the ground. I just cannot wrap my head around how these animals continue to exist in a pretty (VERY) hostile environment. Does anyone have any fowl insights, or any other examples of essentially wild chickens surviving in other parts of the world?

Hi everyone, I hope all is well! I have a new open ecology article, and this is I think the first from the Journal of Animal Ecology,

You can find the open access link here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.13454

As always, please feel free to discuss this article in the comments below if you like. Questions, comments, or anything remotely relevant is fair game!

Abstract:

1. Despite increasing evidence of the importance of repeatable among‐individual differences in behavior (animal personality) in ecology and evolution, little remains known about the role of animal personalities in sexual selection.

2. Here, we present an investigation of the hypothesis that the personalities of individuals and their sexual partners play a role in different episodes of sexual selection, and the extent to which these effects are modulated by the social environment.

3. We first examined how two repeatable behaviors – exploration and boldness – are associated with pre‐ and postcopulatory sexual selection, with a focus on the former, in male red junglefowl, Gallus gallus, using replicate groups across three experimental sex ratio treatments. We further explored how the social environment modulates relationships between male personality and mating performance, and whether mating is assortative or disassortative with respect to exploration or boldness. Lastly, we examined behavioral mechanisms linking personality with mating performance.

4. Across all sex ratios, the fastest‐ and slowest‐exploring males harassed females proportionally less, and faster‐exploring males associated with females more and received more sexual solicitations. In female‐biased groups, the fastest‐ and slowest‐exploring males experienced the highest mating success and lowest sperm competition intensity. Faster‐exploring males also obtained more mates in female‐biased groups when their competitors were, on average, slower‐exploring, and the proportion of matings obtained by fast‐exploring males decreased with the proportion of fast‐exploring males in a group, consistent with negative frequency‐dependent sexual selection. While boldness did not predict mating performance, there was a tendency for individuals to mate disassortatively with respect to boldness.

5. Collectively, our results suggest that male exploration can play a role in sexual selection, and that sexual selection on personality is complex and contingent on the social environment.

I've been slowly taming this Red Junglefowl that lives in the jungle near my house. He comes for breakfast and dinner but keeps his distance. I decided to catch him today. Took me 12 hours. He outsmarted box traps. Snares. You name it. I chased him through the jungle and climbed trees after him. My dog treed him around dusk and I chopped down the tree for the catch. He's one handsome bird.

Have a look at this bird

https://m.imgur.com/a/osbxcok

Hi r/singapore , my focus this week will be on the Red Junglefowl and its relatives (collectively known as gamebirds) of Singapore.

The Red Junglefowl used to be found mostly on Pulau Ubin, and in recent years has started to become quite widespread across mainland Singapore. It lives mostly in forested and wooded areas, but has also adapted to many of our parks and other urban green spaces. Some of the places where Red Junglefowl (or birds that look a lot like them - I'll explain in a bit) are easily encountered include Pulau Ubin, the Singapore Botanic Gardens, Bukit Batok Nature Park, Fort Canning Park, Pasir Ris Park, Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park, and Windsor Nature Park. There's a population in the Sin Ming area that was featured in an episode of Wild City.

This species is the wild ancestor of the domestic chicken, which is believed to have originated from multiple domestication events thousands of years ago in various parts of Southeast Asia, southern China, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Both the wild and domestic birds are all considered to be a single species, Gallus gallus. So how do you tell the wild Red Junglefowl apart from a free-ranging domestic chicken?

The first is in coloration - domestic chickens come in all sorts of colours, while Red Junglefowl have a specific look - roosters have bright red skin on the comb (the fleshy skin on the top of the head), face, and wattles (the 2 bits of fleshy skin hanging beneath the bill). They also have a prominent white patch of skin at the ears. The plumage on the neck is golden-yellow, the shoulders are maroon or dark red, and the tail feathers are long and dark green. Here's an example of a rooster from Pulau Ubin. Hens are a very drab brown, also possess the white ear patch, have much paler facial skin, and usually lack a comb or wattles, or if they're present, these structure are tiny. Here's an example from the Botanic Gardens. You will also notice that the chicks in this photo are not yellow, like those of many domestic chickens. Instead, their plumage helps provide camouflage.

Another feature used to tell the Red Junglefowl apart from its

While the People of the Strait have certainly incorporated the Red Junglefowl into their diet, the demand for the bird’s delicious meat and eggs has so far greatly outstripped the supply. Thankfully, with the establishment of more permanent settlements, farmers in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula have begun to perfect the proper breeding and rearing techniques to maximize these birds’ potential. Overtime, farmers are even able to focus on breeding the individual birds which lay the most eggs and produce the most meat while requiring the least feed, and which are most docile and comfortable around humans.

It took centuries to completely domesticate the Red Junglefowl. Its taming in Southeast Asia marked the rise of a distinct breed both well-suited to the hot, wet climate and perfect for creating all manner of delicious cuisine. In accordance with their reverence for nature, the Sumalay farmed mostly near the coasts, avoiding clearing jungle for agricultural purposes when possible. As such, approaching boats would often catch sight of large wooden pens meant to contain these creatures.

The domestication of the junglefowl also marked a very important turning point in Sumalay society. For the first time, individual families and farming communities possessed something of great value. It took a great deal of resources (including time and labour) to rear fowl to adulthood, and their useful by-products meant that the birds were as good as gold around the Strait of Malacca. Although used primarily for food and eggs (any meat not consumed was turned into dogfood or buried alongside crops to aid their growth), red junglefowl feathers were also prized for their aesthetic use. Those who possessed many fowls often wore clothes adorned with their red and black feathers to signify their profession, and along with it, their prosperity.

This new, valuable asset required people to guard it. This manifested as part-time poultry farmers, part-time militiamen, who would wear clothes made of chicken feathers and carry forked spears designed both for catching and blocking the movement of chickens, and impaling any would-be predators or thieves that came too close. These surprisingly fearsome chicken-protectors were so impressive that the word for protector, or “pengayam” in the colloquial tongue, was actually derived from the word for fowl, “ayam”.

Over the next several hundred years, as wealth in the form of fowl and spices began to accumulate in the Strait of Malacca, more