News Animals

Chicken DNA is replacing the genetics of their ancestral jungle fowl

The foul mix could hurt wild birds’ long-term survival and the ability to breed better chickens

a wild red jungle fowl, which looks like a colorful rooster, standing in a forest

Wild red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) range throughout South and Southeast Asia, where they are interbreeding with domesticated chickens.

Jason Thompson/flickr (CC BY 2.0)

By Jake Buehler

Today’s red jungle fowl — the wild forebears of the domesticated chicken — are becoming more chickenlike. New research suggests that a large proportion of the wild fowl’s DNA has been inherited from chickens, and relatively recently.