Cry fowl! Why the apparently humble chicken actually has plenty to crow about

Pervasive, mundane and bland, chicken is the magnolia paint of the meat aisle: a pedestrian, if practical, choice. But according to Andrew Lawler, its ubiquity belies a significance that we ignore at our peril. “The chicken has assumed this huge [influence] as the most important source of protein for humanity without people really giving a lot of thought to the chicken itself,” he says.

Setting the record straight, Lawler’s latest tome recasts the chicken as a “feathered Swiss Army knife” – a bird that has fuelled cultural, economic and scientific growth for several thousand years since the shy and skittish red junglefowl of Asia became domesticated, picked up a dash of grey junglefowl genes and ultimately – by means of an unlikely sounding postwar breeding contest called the “Chicken of Tomorrow” – became the broiler of today.

But, Lawler reveals, the chicken’s appeal stretches far beyond its recent culinary coup. Besides serving as an early-morning alarm clock, the bird also acts as a pest-control agent, while its body was used throughout antiquity in a plethora of remedies – and still is.

“There are things already on the shelf such as anti-wrinkle creams that are created from a rooster’s comb,” he tells me, referring to Pfizer’s penchant for white leghorns. Eggs are also valuable; besides their nutritional worth, they are used in their millions to produce our annual flu vaccines, as well as offering a means to explore embryo development and even test theories of how birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Yes, in just one of many fascinating (chicken) nuggets, Lawler explores the efforts of geneticists to tinker with chicken embryos so that they develop teeth and even snouts. “The value I see is simply understanding that the chicken is descended from these creatures,” he says.

It’s not his only foray into the bizarre. Indeed Lawler believes he has found an explanation for the legend of the basilisk, a terrifying serpent said to hatch from an egg laid by a cockerel. Monsters aside, the broody male, he says, might have been a gynandromorph – a quirk of genetics in which the chicken has the “plumbing”, and appearance, of both male and female. “It is clear that in medieval times there were people who observed what looked like a rooster laying an egg and now we know that actually it’s possible,” he says.

Speaking to Lawler, it’s hard to remember that we are talking about the two-a-penny chicken. But then, as he points out, the bird hasn’t always been the epitome of banality. The domesticated fowl was revered for millennia, not least for its prowess in combat – a trait that was exploited in sacred rituals and ultimately led to its spread across the globe. “Gradually that turned into a way to gamble and then people began to trade the fighting cocks around south Asia as they do today,” he explains.

But as the chicken becomes ever more popular, Lawler believes the future of the red junglefowl is at risk. “Because they are the same species they are very vulnerable to losing their pure genetics to domesticated chickens,” he says, explaining that could not only hinder our study of the bird’s domestication but also erode a useful genepool should the domesticated bird fall foul of disease. The success of the chicken is undeniable – but it might yet come home to roost.

Why did the chicken cross the world? (The epic saga of the bird that powers civilisation) Published by Duckworth on 7 May, £16.99