20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Animal Domestication

Dogs and cats are popular companions. But they’re not the only critters we’ve converted from wild to mild.

By Gemma Tarlach
Jul 20, 2017 12:00 AMNov 18, 2019 2:33 PM
rooster
Humans domesticated the red jungle fowl at least 4,000 years ago. Feathercollector/iStock

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1. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That’s easy: eggs. Microfossil embryos in primitive eggs from southern China are about 600 million years old.

2. The chicken, however, now the world’s most common domestic animal, dates back a mere 4,000 or so years. Most researchers believe that Gallus gallus, the red jungle fowl, was first domesticated in East or Southeast Asia.

3. In 2014, a study ruffled feathers with claims that bones from northern China showed the wild G. gallus had been chickenized into G. gallus domesticus about 10,000 years ago.

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