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Could feral chicken take over the Amazon ?

Feral chicken are known in several places. They can be pretty successful and have been signaled as threats to ecosystems and crops in archipelagos like Hawaii and Bermuda. But I’ve thinking about Brasil: Given the sheer amount of chicken being bread there, the presence of the Amazon rainforest, which has a similar climate to whence jungle fowls, the chicken’s ancestors come; and its already fragilized ecosystem, isn’t there a specific risk there ? So far, I’ve seen no South American country listed as famous for feral chicken presence . But hypothetically, if a few millions of fowls escaped a massive Brasilian farm and swarmed the Amazon; what could happen ? Would they quickly die off, due to having lost adaptations to wildlife, having an insufficient ratio of roosters and facing many predators ? Would they outcompete one or two local bird species and steal their niche, but otherwise fit fine in the food chain without further disrupting the ecosystem? Or would it spell a great ecological catastrophy ?

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

In worst case scenario they would overpopulate and consume all natural resources until a majority of their population starved down to an equilibrium. Eventually there would arise some predator that would adapt to take advantage of the new food supply. This would probably take thousands of not millions of years though.

Our limited human lifespans make us succeptable to thinking in short term, in the long term it wouldn’t matter in the least bit if chickens ravaged the amazon ecosystem since it would just adapt over a relatively short time geologically. 50 thousand years is unimaginable to us but peanuts to the planet and environment. Rediculously successful organisms ravaging the environment and killing themselves off is a story as old as biology.

Donebrach ,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

in 40 years when son of son of Elon Musk, Feral Chicken (Musk) takes over majority share of Amazon, i will… likely be dead, but ill be laughing from the big cloud storage in the sky.

lalo ,

The jaguar and anaconda population would increase for a few generations, but it would balance it out after a while.

Why do you think feral chickens are a concern? Most chicken farms in Brazil are much farther from the Amazon, the deforestation land is mostly used to grow soy for animal feed.

loaExMachina OP ,

Why do you think feral chickens are a concern?

No particular reason, chicken, ecological disasters and Brasil are just three things that have been popping in and out of my mind lately, it was only a matter of time until they combined.

The jaguar and anaconda population would increase for a few generations, but it would balance it out after a while

But would chicken still have a place in this new balance? I mean, tigers and pythons haven’t hunted the jungle fowls to extinction, nor have jaguars and anacondas done so to the unrelated, yet- similar tinamu…

commie ,

85% of global soy is pressed for oil. what’s given to animals is almost entirely the waste from the oil presses.

SirToxicAvenger ,

didnt the ancestors of the chicken evolve in the rain forests of/near China? I’m sure there’s latent genes that could express themselves within a few generations - much how domesticated pigs can turn to wild hogs in just a few generations

loaExMachina OP ,

Yeah, it’s the jungle fowls I mentioned, from southern China, india and SEA; that’s why I think they might adapt well to the rainforest climate !

BassTurd ,

Feral chickens on the island if Kauai have no natural predators, so they are able to thrive in the wild. That is not the same in the rainforest, so I’m guessing no.

Vilian , (edited )

shit man, put that chicken in there and only thing you gonna do is make a few big cats, snakes, crocodile, etc happier, also predatory birds, native people, hell even insects, if that chicken never encountered scorpions, they don’t have immunity to the sting like others chickens

loaExMachina OP , (edited )

Yeah, you might be right, but just to feed the debate I’ll take the defense of the chicken :

  • Their sheer number is a big factor : There can be hundreds of thousands in a single farm. Even if tens of thousands die on the first days, the next morning, the survivors will be less fat and more alert.
  • Red junglefowls are quite adept at living in a rainforest environment despite being nearly flightless and living close to many predators. Their strategy of being diurnal and hiding in the trees at night to avoid mostly nocturnal predators works pretty well and many Amazon predators are nocturnal as well. Mass farm chicken might be too fat at first, but it shouldn’t last too long and feral chicken are known to quickly recover their instincts and start brooding in trees.
  • Tinamus while very far from chicken classification-wise (and closer to ostriches), fill a very similar niche and have a similar lifestyle to jungle fowls, also being very poor flyers. This proves that this type of lifestyle can also work in the Amazon. And with tinamu populations being destabilized by deforestation, and chicken being more adapted to a variety of lifestyles, they could outcompete them and steal their niche.
  • Just for the scorpion part : Chicken rarely encounrer scorpions due to these being nocturnal. And when they do, it’s a pretty even match : The scorpions might poison them, but the feathers make it harder and the chicken might eat the scorpion first. Source
Devi ,

Something that might come up in a commercial farm escape is debeaking. They cut the end off the beak to stop them fighting in crowded conditions and that will decrease their chances to defend themselves in the wild.

octoperson ,

That’s only a concern for one generation tho, which afaik for commercially bred chickens might be just a matter of weeks

Devi ,

Chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch, so 3 weeks, and then to adult size it probably 6 weeks minimum, so I'd say 2 months minimum they need to survive as a collective.

loaExMachina OP ,

Wow, I didn’t know about that… It’s even more troublesome for the hens if it keeps them from feeding of worms and bugs. If part of them survive long enough to breed, this won’t be a problem for the next generation… But this is already a big “if”.

Devi ,

Would definitely be an issue for hunting. They can eat grain but not peck so would have trouble getting ants or similar fast moving bugs.

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