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Chick |
Classification:
Kingdom: Animalia (animals)
Phylum: Chordata (chordates) Class: Aves (birds) Order: Galliformes (turkeys, chickens, and pheasants) Family: Phasianidae (chickens, pheasants, and their relations) Genus: Gallus (junglefowl) Species: Gallus (gallus) domesticus (domesticated chicken) Chick masks! How to make them
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Awww... a tiny, fuzzy chick! A chick is a baby chicken, and chickens have been kept and bred by people for so long that no one's exactly sure where they came from in the first place. Scientists now believe they are descended from the red and grey junglefowls, the Indian and Southeast Asian wild relatives of the peacock and the pheasant. Southeast Asia is also probably where they were first domesticated thousands of years ago, and by the time of the Romans they were all over the place. Before a battle, Roman generals would put food in front of some chickens and open their cages. The more enthusiastically the chickens tucked in, the happier the gods were and the better the battle would go. If the chickens wouldn't eat, and stayed in their cages or tried to fly away, even the bravest generals would usually call it a day. Today, there are more than 24 billion chickens on Earth. That's about four times the number of people, and there are more chickens than any other kind of bird. On the Web:
Chickens on Wikipedia.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Hencam.co.uk, a webcam in a chicken coop in West Yorkshire. Farm poultry, a book about chickens from 1901 A chicken and egg puzzle game on Donut Games. The RSPCA on how chickens are raised in the UK. |
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