Chicken

The chicken is a domesticated bird kept for eggs and meat. Birds are the living descendants of dinosaurs, so the chicken is, strictly speaking, a dinosaur. When researchers analysed proteins recovered from a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil in the late 2000s, the closest matches among living animals tested were the chicken and the ostrich.^[1] The chicken has not been told and continues to behave as though it were a chicken.

Numbers

There are tens of billions of chickens alive at any one time, more than any other bird and several times the number of humans. If chickens were ever to organise, they would win most votes.^[2]

The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, has been a philosophical riddle since ancient Greece. Biologists point out that eggs were being laid by other animals, including dinosaurs, long before chickens existed, so the egg came first. Philosophers point out that this is not what they meant.

Dinosaur features

• Scales on the legs: yes.
• Lays eggs: yes.
• Related to T. rex: yes.
• Roars: no; clucks.
• Hunts large prey: insects and grain, sometimes small frogs.

Palaeontologists say the chicken shows what dinosaurs could become given enough time and a farm.

See also

• Ostrich – the other close T. rex match
• Sphere – an approximation of an egg
• Morning – when it is loudest

References

1. Rex, T. (2008). Grandfather Was a Tyrannosaur. Coop Press.
2. Census of Birds (2019). “There Are Quite a Lot of Chickens”. Summary.
3. Egg, E. & Hen, H. (1999). Which First? Two editions, order disputed.