I Can’t Sleep - Chickens | Gentle Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Ease into sleep with this calm bedtime reading about chickens, one of humanity’s oldest and most widespread domesticated animals. Benjamin’s soothing narration explores their history, biology, and role in cultures across the world, all in a steady, comforting cadence. With fact-filled storytelling—no whispers, no hypnosis—this episode is designed to relax your mind, ease insomnia, and quiet anxious thoughts. Perfect for reducing stress and helping you drift into peaceful rest. Press play, let the day fade, and settle into sleep as you learn about chickens. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Chickens, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Chickens. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch.

I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause. With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, and become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Chicken.

The chicken, Gallus Domesticus, is a large and round, short-winged bird, domesticated from the red jungle fowl of Southeast Asia around 8,000 years ago. Most chickens are raised for food, providing meat and eggs. Others are kept as pets or for cockfighting. Chickens are common and widespread domestic animals with a total population of 26.5 billion, as of 2023, and an annual production of more than 50 billion birds. A hen-bred-for-laying can produce over 300 eggs per year. There are numerous cultural references to chickens in folklore, religion, and literature. Chicken can mean a chick, as in William Shakespeare's play,

Macbeth, where MacDef laments the deaths of all my pretty chickens and their dam. The usage is preserved in place names, such as the hen and chicken islands. In older sources and still often in trade in scientific contexts, chicken as a species are described as common fowl or domestic fowl. Chickens are relatively large birds, active by day. The body is round, the legs are unfethered in most breeds, and the wings are short. Wild jungle fowl can fly. Chickens and their flight muscles are too heavy to allow them to fly more than a short distance. Size and coloration vary widely between breeds.

Adult chickens of both sexes have a fleshy crest on their heads called a comb or a coxcomb, and hanging flaps of skin on either side under their beaks called waddles. Combs and waddles are more prominent in males. Some breeds have a mutation that causes extra feathering under the face, giving the appearance of a beard. Chickens are omnivorous. In the wild, they scratch at the soil to search for seeds, insects, and animals, as large as lizards, small snakes, and young mice. A chicken may lay for five to ten years, depending on the breed. The world's oldest known chicken lived for 16 years.

Chickens are gregarious, living in flocks, and incubate eggs and raise young communally. Individual chickens dominate others, establishing a pecking order. Dominant individuals take priority for access to food and nest sites. The concept of dominance involving pecking. Peking was described in female chickens as the pecking order. Male chickens tend to leap and use their claws in conflicts. Chickens are capable of mobbing and killing a weak or inexperienced predator, such as a young fox.

A male's crowing is a loud and sometimes shrill call, serving as a territorial signal to other males, and in response to sudden disturbances within their surroundings. Hens cluck loudly, after laying an egg, and to call their chicks. Chickens give different warning calls to indicate that a predator is approaching from the air or on the ground. Water or ground-dwelling vows, similar to modern partridges, in the Galaformis, the order of bird that chickens belong to, survive the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction event that killed all tree-dwelling birds and their dinosaur relatives. chickens are descended primarily from the red jungle fowl and are scientifically classified as the same species.

Domesticated chickens freely interbreed with populations of red jungle fowl. The domestic chicken has subsequently hybridized with gray jungle fowl, Sri Lankan jungle fowl, and green jungle fowl. A gene for yellow skin, for instance, was incorporated into domestic brinkly birds from the gray jungle fowl. It is estimated that chickens share between 71 and 79% of their genome with the red jungle fowl. According to one early study, a single domestication event of the red jungle fowl in present-day Thailand gave rise to the modern chicken, with minor transitions separating the modern breeds. The Red Jungle Fowl is well adapted to take advantage of the vast quantities of seed produced during the end of the multi-decade bamboo seeding cycle to boost its own reproduction.

In domesticating the chicken, humans took advantage of the Red Jungle Fowl's ability to reproduce prolifically when exposed to a surge in its food supply. Exactly when and where the chicken was domesticated remains controversial. Genomic studies estimate that the chicken was domesticated 8,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and spread to China and India 2000 to 3,000 years later. Archaeological evidence supports domestic chickens in Southeast Asia well before 6,000 BC, China by 6,000 BC and India by 2000 BC. A landmark 2020 Nature study that fully sequenced 863 chickens across

the world, suggests that all domesticated chickens originate from a single domestication event of red jungle fowl, whose present-day distribution is predominantly in the southwestern China, northern Thailand, and Myanmar. These domesticated chickens spread across southeast and South Asia, where they interbred with local wild species of jungle fowl, forming genetically and geographically distinct groups. Analysis of the most popular commercial breeds shows that the white leghorn breed possesses a mosaic of divergent ancestries inherited from subspecies of red jungle fowl. A word for domestic chicken monarch is part of the reconstructed Proto-Austronesian language, indicating they were domesticated by the Austronesians people since ancient times.

chickens, together with dogs and pigs, were carried throughout the entire range of the prehistoric Austronesian maritime migrations to islands Southeast Asia, Micronesia, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar, starting from at least 3,000 BC from Taiwan. These chickens might have been introduced during pre-Columbian times to South America by a Polynesian seafarers, but evidence for this is still putative. The possibility that domestic chickens were in the Americas before Western contact is debated by researchers, but blue egg chickens, found only in the Americas in Asia, suggest an Asian origin from early American chickens.

A lack of data from Thailand, Russia, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa makes it difficult to lay out a clear map of the spread of chickens in these areas. Better description and genetic analysis of local breeds threatened by extinction may also help with research into this area. Chicken bones from the Aralco Peninsula in south central Chile were radiocarbon dated as pre-Columbian, and DNA analysis suggested they were related to prehistoric populations in Polynesia. However, further study of the same bones cast doubt on the findings. Chicken remains have been difficult to date, given the small and fragile bird bones.

This may account for discrepancies in dates given by different sources. Archaeological evidence is supplemented by mentions in historical texts from the last few centuries BC and by depictions in prehistoric artworks, such as across, Central Asia. Chickens were widespread throughout southern Central Asia by the 4th century BC. Middle Eastern chicken remains go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC in Syria. Phoenicians spread chickens along the Mediterranean coast as far as Liberia. During the Hellenistic period in the southern Levant, chickens began to be widely domesticated for food. The first pictures of chickens in Europe are found in Corinthian pottery of the 7th century BC.

Breeding increased under the Roman Empire and reduced in the Middle Ages. Genetic sequencing of chicken bones from archaeological sites in Europe revealed that in the high Middle Ages, chickens became less aggressive and began to lay eggs earlier in the breeding season. Chickens reached Egypt by the Middle East for purposes of cockfighting about 1,400 BC. and became widely bred in Egypt around 300 BC. Three possible routes of introduction into Africa around the early first millennium AD could have been through the Egyptian Nile Valley, the East African Roman Greek, or Indian trade, or from Carthage and the Berbers across the Sahara.

The earliest known remains are from Mali, Nubia, East Coast, and South Africa. and date back to the middle of the first millennium AD. Keeping chickens as pets became increasingly popular in the 2000s among urban and suburban residents. Many people obtain chickens for their egg production, but often name them and treat them as any other pet like cats or dogs. Chickens chickens provide companionship and have individual personalities. While many do not cuddle much, they are not. will eat from one's hand, jump onto one's lap, respond to and follow their handlers, as well as show affection. Chickens are social, inquisitive, intelligent birds, and many people

find their behavior entertaining. Certain breeds, such as silkies and many Bantam varieties, are generally docile and are often recommended as good pets around children with disabilities. chickens are featured widely in folklore, religion, literature, and popular culture. The chicken is a sacred animal in many cultures and deeply embedded in belief systems and religious practices. Roosters are sometimes used for divination, a practice called electromancy. Chickens have been featured in art and farmyard scenes, such as Adrian van Utrecht's 1646, turkeys and chickens, and Walter Osborne's 1885, feeding the chickens. The nursery rhyme cockadoodle do, its chorus line imitating the cockreels call,

was published in Mother Goose's melody in 1765. The 2000 animated adventure comedy film Chicken Run, directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, featured anthropomorphic chickens with many chicken jokes. The Hen and Chicken Islands, usually known as the Hen and Chickens, lie to the east of the North Auckland Peninsula, off the coast of northern New Zealand. They lie 12 kilometers east of Bremhead and 40 kilometers southeast of Fongare, was a total area of 8.44 square kilometers.

Approximately 18,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum, when sea levels were over 100 meters lower than present-day levels, the islands were hilly features surrounded by a vast coastal plain. Sea levels began to rise 7,000 years ago, after which the islands separated from the rest of New Zealand. These islands were given their European named by Captain James Cook, who first cited them on the 25th in November 1769. It has been suggested that the name was inspired by an old name for the star cluster usually known as the Pleides.

Urgently owned by the Maori, they were sold to the New Zealand government in 1883. The islands were made a scenic reserve in 2008, owing to the rarity of their flora and fauna, and became a wildlife refuge in 1953. Hen Island had actually passed from Maori hands a few years earlier, being bought by Thomas Uthwaite in 1872. It was bequeathed to the nation by his daughter, Issa Uwiswit, in 1927, and it too was named as a scenic reserve. In June 1940, the Canadian Australasian ship RMS Niagara sank off the island. after hitting a mine. Most of the cargo, which included gold bullion, was later salvaged. The islands are noted for their bird life, with colonies of sea birds, as well as forest birds,

which have become scarce or extinct in the mainland. The islands have been identified as an important bird area by bird life international, because they are home to a breeding population of about 500 pairs of Peacroft petrels. There are also native reptiles on the islands, including Tuatara, geckos, and skinks. Hen Island, or Maori Taranga, lies seven kilometers to the southwest from the rest of the archipelago. It is also considerably larger than the chicken islands, or Maratiri, which comprise a chain of six small islands running northwest to southeast to the north of Hen Island.

A chain consists of Wareware and Morifanoa Islands, together called northwest chicken. Mauitaha, West Chicken, Lady Alice Island, or Motumuka, Big Chicken, and Fatu Pouke, Middle Chicken, and Coppermine Island, Eastern Chicken. The Laranga is the largest island by some considerable margin, totaling 4.7 square kilometers. Long and thin, it has a length of 6 kilometers and an average width of less than 1,000 meters. A remnant of a 4 million-year-old volcano, the island is dominated by a rocky ridge, reaching to about 417 meters at its highest point, called the pinnacle.

sail rock, a stack, rises from the ocean three kilometers to the south of Hen Island, and is a prominent navigational point for yachts. By the 1800s, Hen Island was the only place in New Zealand with a surviving population of North Island's saddleback. The once common species of forest bird found in the North Island was nearly wiped out by the human introduction of mammalian predators, such as rats and stoats. In the 1960s, translocations of saddleback from Hen Island to other island sanctuaries around New Zealand began. Wareware and Murifenoa, two small rocky islands with a combined area of three hectares.

Mawaitaha, this 20 hectare rugged scrub-covered rock, lies one kilometer to the south, of Morifenwa. It rises to 125 meters. An unofficial name until 1970 was West Chicken Island. The New Zealand Department of Conservation and the Nati-Yiwi have entered into partnership to set up a sanctuary for the Polynesian rat, or Kiori, on the island's Muaytaha and Araara. A spokesman for the Department of Conservation said the department's policy change from eradication would assist scientific research. Lady Alice Island Named after Lady Alice Ferguson, wife of Governor General Sir Charles Ferguson, it is the largest of the five chickens and is of particular significance because of its flora and fauna. The island covers 1.4 kilometers squared

and is surrounded by rocky reefs. It was occupied by Maori until the 1820s and was used as a base for fishermen in the 1890s. Cattle were introduced at about this time, but were removed in the 1920s. Fatupuke, formerly known as Vakaha, this island is composed of a large eastern section and a peninsula to the southwest.

The coast of the peninsula forms one of the chain's mainland features, a 300-meter-wide bay. The island covers one square kilometer and a steep rising to 234 meters. Copper Mine Island Copper Mine Island, formerly known as Maui Pane, covers an area of 75 hectares. It is composed of two sections joined by a short isthmus.

As the name suggests, there are copper deposits on the island, but attempts at mining them in 1849 and 1998 proved unprofitable. On chickens, a comb is a fleshy growth or crest on the top of the head of some galenaceous birds, such as domestic chickens. The alternative name, cox comb, with several spelling variations, reflects the fact that combs are generally larger on cockbirds than on hens. The comb is one of several fleshy protuberances in the heads of chickens, the others being the waddles and earlobes, which collectively are called chyrinkles.

In turkeys, the chirinkles are the fleshly nodules on the head and throat. chicken combs are most commonly red, but may also be black or dark purple in breeds, such as the silky or seabright. In other species, the color may vary from light gray to deep blue or red. The comb may be a reliable indicator of health or vigor, and is used for mate assessment in some poultry species. Combe shape varies considerably depending on the breed or species of bird.

Of the many types and shapes seen in chicken cogs, the principal ones are the single comb, extending in a single line from the top of the base of the beak to the back of the head. It consists of a solid vertical part with a series of points or serrations. The size, shape, and number of these, and the overall shape of the comb are all variable, depending on the breed. The cup comb or buttercup comb as seen in the Sicilian buttercup, a cup-shaped comb with spiked edges. The cushion comb as seen in the chandelier and silky is a compact cushion-shaped mass covered with small protuberances with a shallow transverse groove across it. The leaf comb or shell comb as seen in the hoodon, which resembles a butterfly with partially open wings. The pea comb or triple comb, somewhat like three small single combs in a row,

seen in breeds including the Aracana, Brahma, Bacay, Indian Game, Hicksworth, Mele, Simatra, among others. The raspberry comb as seen in the Orlov, which roughly resembles half a raspberry cut lengthwise. The rose comb as seen in the Hamburg and Wyandotte, broad and fairly fast, covered with small pointed protuberances, with a long backwards-facing spike to the rear. The strawberry or walnut comb has seen in the Malay, which roughly resembles half a strawberry or walnut. In hens, the comb is usually smaller and neater than in the rooster.

There are three known genes affecting cone shape, rose comb, pea comb, and duplex comb, which has one allele responsible for buttercup combs and another one responsible for V combs. A clutch of eggs is a group of eggs produced by birds, amphibians, or reptiles, often at a single time, particularly those laid in a nest. In birds, destruction of a clutch by predators or removal by humans, for example the California Condor breeding program results in double clutching. The technique is used to double the production of a species' eggs,

in the California Condor case specifically to increase population size. Clutch size differs greatly between species, sometimes even within the same genus. It may also differ within the same species due to many factors, including habitat, health, nutrition, predation pressures, and time of year. Clutch size variation can also reflect variation in optimal reproduction effort. In birds, clutch size can vary within a species due to various features, while some species are determinant layers, laying a species specific number of eggs. Long-lived species tend to have smaller clutch sizes than short-lived species. The evolution of optimal clutch size is also driven by other factors, such as parent-offspring conflict.

In birds, ornithologist David Lack carried out much research into regulation of clutch size. In species with altricial young, he proposed that optimal clutch size was determined by the number of young a parent could feed until fledgling. In precocial birds, Lack determined that clutch size was determined by the nutrients available to egg-laying females. An experimental study in black brand keys, which rarely lay more than five eggs, found that the probability of an egg successfully leading to a fledged gosling decline from 0.81 for two egg clutches to 0.5 for 7 egg clutches.

whilst the nesting period increased with the increasing number of eggs laid. This suggests that there is no benefit for female black brand to lay more than five eggs.