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The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the red junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, with a population of more than 19 billion in 2011,〔UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation reported in the Economist: ().〕 there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird or domestic animal. Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food, consuming both their meat and their eggs. The earliest known domestication occurred in Northern China 8,000 BCE determined from archaeological chicken bones.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.pnas.org/content/111/49/17564 )〕 Previously genetic studies have pointed to multiple maternal origins in Southeast, East, and South Asia, but with the clade found in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa originating in the Indian subcontinent. From India, the domesticated chicken was imported to Lydia in western Asia Minor, and to Greece by the fifth century BC.〔Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, (Anthea Bell, translator) ''The History of Food'', Ch. 11 "The History of Poultry", revised ed. 2009, p. 306.〕 Fowl had been known in Egypt since the mid-15th century BC, with the "bird that gives birth every day" having come to Egypt from the land between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Thutmose III.〔Howard Carter, "An Ostracon Depicting a Red Jungle-Fowl (The Earliest Known Drawing of the Domestic Cock)" ''The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology'', 9.1/2 (April 1923), pp. 1-4.〕〔Pritchard, "The Asiatic Campaigns of Thutmose III" ''Ancient Near East Texts related to the Old Testament'', p240.〕 == Terminology == In the UK and Ireland adult male chickens over the age of one year are primarily known as cocks, whereas in America, Australia and Canada they are more commonly called roosters. Males less than a year old are ''cockerels''.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Cockerel – definitions from Dictionary.com )〕 Castrated roosters are called ''capons'' (surgical and chemical castration are now illegal in some parts of the world). Females over a year old are known as ''hens'' and younger females as ''pullets''〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Pullet – definitions from Dictionary.com )〕 although in the egg-laying industry, a pullet becomes a hen when she begins to lay eggs at 16 to 20 weeks of age. In Australia and New Zealand (also sometimes in Britain), there is a generic term ''chook'' to describe all ages and both sexes. The young are called ''chicks'' and the meat is called ''chicken''. "Chicken" originally referred to chicks, not the species itself. The species as a whole was then called ''domestic fowl'', or just ''fowl''. This use of "chicken" survives in the phrase "Hen and Chickens", sometimes used as a British public house or theatre name, and to name groups of one large and many small rocks or islands in the sea (see for example Hen and Chicken Islands). The word "chicken" is sometimes erroneously construed to mean females exclusively, despite the term "hen" for females being in wide circulation. In the Deep South of the United States chickens are also referred to by the slang term ''yardbird''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「chicken」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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