Bwana Kisumu Chicken of Uganda and Kenya

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Any naked neck chicken accrued the trait from this giant island race or species.

Hi! Here's a descendant.
He escaped from his pen this evening and was about to go to roost in a tree:

I brought him in and weighed him --- just over 8lbs. His 'ancestry' (at my hands) includes Naked Neck (hatchery Turken), Silkie, Frizzle Cochin, Ameraucana, Jersey Giant. He isn't the least bit 'gamey' and not upright, but the look is 'vaguely' similar.

Lisa​

 

[Resolution]

Reference 1



There has been quite a lot of genetic work on the domestic fowl over the last few decades. The enigma of the Austronesian Seafarer arriving in the Comoros, Madagascar and Reunion centuries before anyone else, including Africans who live very close by these islands has been of some interest to researchers.

The DNA of their pigs and chickens, unearthed in the most ancient sites- radiocarboned, together with words used for these and other animals- reveal some interesting things about the Austronesians and their livestock.

The DNA of the oldest pigs carried to Madagascar came from wild pigs endemic to the Comoros islands. Chicken bone remnants were also unearthed at these same sites in the same strata. Their DNA is not identical with any known chicken breeds - well known races from India, Indonesia, Malaysia and so forth. However, it does appear that giant game fowl from Malaysia and Indonesia, Saipan and Japan share several genetic and morphological features with those of the subfossils discovered in the limestones caves of Madagscar.

It has also been discovered that chickens were present in the Comoros before the first human beings are believed to have reached the islands.

One of the problems of these fowl, together with bones discovered in Northern China that are a thousand or so years younger, is that they are gigantic- much larger than any living junglefowl. Radiocarbon dating reveals that the chicken bones discovered in the Comoros,Madagascar and Northern China are much older than the chicken has been domesticated- or rather, the development of the size -was unknown in these ancient times. That doesn't mean that it's impossible that the chicken was domesticated thousands of years earlier than believed, but rather there is no evidence to substantiate that theory. The evidence that places a species of giant junglefowl in the hands of South East Asians (Austronesians) prior to the time that they are believed to have first begun their Neolithic stage is a bit stronger.
The Austronesians cultivated wild species at a specific period of time and then carried these semi-domestic species with them everywhere they went.


It may be that the Austronesians discovered a flightless race of junglefowl on some island in South East Asia, Tioman for example, and carried these birds to the Comoros, Madagascar, Reunion and back to their homelands in Vietnam. Wherever they came from, they must have been come from a place relatively devoid of ground predators as they are fairly flightless. On islands where large predators like leopards or tigers are extinct, mid-sized predators like civets and smaller cats tend to quickly eradicate ground birds, even those that fly well, because the small predators have no predators of their own.

There are some haplotypes unique to Malagasy, Ganoi, Malay, Asil, Shamo, Koeyoshi and Saipan which suggest that there are novel genetics in their ancestry not shared by other junglefowl species.

The fossil record of Gallus is even more curious with extinct species ranging from South Eastern Europe through the Near East, Southern China and Malaysia.

I wonder if the Austronesians carried this upright creature -that carried its wings over its back- (as if to shield it from avian predators versus covering its vulnerable flanks, which shield against terrestrial predators) to Comoros where it grew even larger and more fierce.

Regardless, the notion that any of the well known games came before the Malagasy/Ganoi/Bali is what has been put into question with the molecular evidence.
It would appear that they were created using the genetics of this large fowl. Additionally, the morphology of the birds one observes in very remote villages, especially on Reunion and in Madagascar are problematic. They do not exhibit the double wattles or single comb of the Red JF but rather, have the single lappet of the Green JF and Sri Lanka Jf ( The Sri Lanka species exhibits a prominent gular lappet as well as double wattles.) Also, other traits, for example multiple spurring, reduced sexual dimorphism, the presence of brilliant red facial skin extending down to the upper breast; the curious comb with its wide, cow tooth crown- covering much of its forehead and top of its skull- in both sexes-the curious ossification of the skull- a trait apparent in prominently crested races like the Silky, Polish and Crested Mapuche The density of its bones -the skeletal modifications of an extended rib cage and rudimentary wings- the thick, broad bill- these are not traits of known JF species.
This could be docked up to mutation accentuated via artificial selection-save for the fact that some of these traits -at least the enormous size and its haplotypey are not known to have existed so early in the domestication of the chicken. Other chicken bones known from similar times are only the size of the Red JF- perhaps a bit larger but certainly no bigger than a leghorn.

I'll be back to this.