How did chickens become the great evidence that humans reshaped the planet?

When in 500,000 years our distant descendants or extraterrestrials scrutinize the layers of sediments to investigate the past of the Landthey will find unusual evidence of the sudden change that upended life half a million years before: the bones of chicken.

This conclusion was reached by a group of scientists, who searched for evidence that the expansion of appetites and human activity altered natural systems so radically as to usher in a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene, or “epoch of humans.”

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In addition to these bones, there will be other revealing elements of the mid-20th century rupture on the planet: the sudden increase in CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases, radioactive remnants of nuclear tests, the omnipresence of plastics and the spread of invasive species.

But the chicken bones could be one of the most reliable evidence, which also allows the story to be told from different angles.

To begin with, they are the result of human action.

“The chicken we eat is unrecognizable compared to its ancestors or its wild counterparts”explains Carys Bennett, a geologist and lead author of a study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

“Their size, skeletal shape, bone chemistry and genetics are different” clarifies.

Their mere existence, in other words, is proof of humanity’s ability to manipulate natural processes.

The research therefore conferred on this poultry the rank of “marker species” of the Anthropocene.

“clear signal”

The origins of the modern broiler can be traced to the jungles of Southeast Asia, where its ancestor, the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus), was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago.

For a long time, this species was prized for its meat and eggs, but only after World War II did it begin to be reared into the short-lived, portly creature sold in supermarkets around the world.

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“Usually, evolution takes millions of years to occur, but in this case it only took decades to get a new form of animal”, Jan Zalasiewicz, emeritus professor of paleobiology at the English University of Leicester, told AFP.

The Working Group on the Anthropocene that he chaired for more than a decade determined last year that the Holocene epoch – which began 11,700 years ago with the end of the last ice age – gave way to the Anthropocene in the mid-20th century.

Its conclusions will be presented this Tuesday and the Group is expected to identify a site that in its opinion conclusively demonstrates the impact of human beings.

The broiler chicken also supports that definition due to its ubiquity. In any corner of the planet where there are humans, remains of our species’ favorite source of protein can be found.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that there are currently some 33 billion chickens worldwide.

The biomass of domestic chickens is more than three times that of all wild bird species combined.

At least 25 million are slaughtered every day, whether for chicken tikka in Indian Punjab, yakitori in Japan, poulet yassa in Senegal, or McDonald’s nuggets.

“Chickens are a symbol of how our biosphere has changed and is now dominated by human consumption and resource use”continued Bennett, who was a researcher at the University of Leicester before working for the NGO People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

“The enormous number of discarded chicken bones around the world will leave a clear signal in the future geological record”he claimed.

Source: Elcomercio

Callum

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