Chicken

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For the culinary use of chickens, see Chicken as food. For other uses, see Chicken
(disambiguation) and Chooks (disambiguation).

Chicken

A rooster or cock (left) and hen (right)

Conservation status

Domesticated

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Aves
 Order: Galliformes

Family: Phasianidae

Genus: Gallus

Species: G. gallus

Subspecies: G. g. domesticus

Trinomial name

Gallus gallus domesticus

(Linnaeus, 1758)

The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a type of domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the red
junglefowl (Gallus gallus). It is one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, with a
total population of more than 19 billion as of 2011. There are more chickens in the world than any
other bird or domesticated fowl.[1] Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food (consuming
both their meat and eggs) and, less commonly, as pets. Originally raised for cockfighting or for
special ceremonies, chickens were not kept for food until the Hellenistic period (4th–2nd centuries
BC).[2][3]
Genetic studies have pointed to multiple maternal origins in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East
Asia,[4] but with the clade found in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa originating in
the Indian subcontinent. From ancient India, the domesticated chicken spread to Lydia in
western Asia Minor, and to Greece by the 5th century BC.[5] Fowl had been known in Egypt since the
mid-15th century BC, with the "bird that gives birth every day" having come to Egypt from the land
between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Thutmose III.[6][7][8]