Over the last century or so, wild jungle fowl’s genomes have become increasingly similar to chickens’. Between about 20 and 50 percent of the genomes of modern jungle fowl originated in ...

Modern chickens are most closely linked to the wild red jungle fowl subspecies Gallus gallus spadiceus, which today live predominantly in southwestern China, northern Thailand and Myanmar ...

Hundreds of genetic mutations accumulated over thousands of years have transformed the red jungle fowl of South Asia into the domesticated chickens that are a fixture on farms -- and dining tables ...

Red junglefowl, ancestors of wild chickens, are known to mix with domestic birds. Wu et al., 2023. CC BY-SA 4.0 Farmyards and backyards across Asia are filled to the brim with clucking, strutting ...

A new study has revealed that red junglefowl, the wild ancestors of chickens, are losing their genetic diversity as they mate with their domesticated counterparts.

Wright and Gering found that feral chickens possess red-junglefowl gene variants that are linked to brooding. But some genes of domestication do seem to be handy outside the coop.

Those brought to Hawaii were actually red jungle fowl, the wild ancestor of the modern chicken. Over the years, those birds mixed with domestic chickens brought later by European colonists and others.

Charles Darwin first proposed that chickens may have descended from the red jungle fowl because of their similar appearances. (Pictured: A red jungle fowl) Subramanya C K via Wikimedia Commons ...