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Featherless Chickens
Everyone and their brother wrote in about the featherless chicken. Besides the humor value, interesting in that we're creating another species with qualities that suit humans but unsuitable for life on its own.
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The naked chicken, as it has been dubbed, is also a low calorie bird because the lack of feathers means the chicken has less fat.
I would think that it would gain fat since it has no feathers to trap in its own body heat...
but then again, that would only happen if this bird was in nature...
When I saw this I immediately thought of that old internet "conspiracy" about Kentucky Fried Chicken. I think it was called Animal 54 or something like that.
Basically, KFC had genetically altered their chickens so much that the FDA told them to stop using the word "chicken", hence the name change to KFC from Kentucky Fried Chicken. The 'species' of the animal had been changed to Animal #54, since it was no longer a chicken - it couldn't fly and sat there getting fat until feeding time.
Anyone have a link? Sounds funny but apparently alot of people thought it was true - my mom being one of them.
1) The chicken is a hybrid of two types of chickens; it was not genetically engineered, as the article, or at least the photo caption say.
2) These chickens would not "catch cold" due to lack of feathers. You do not "catch a cold" from being cold. You (and your chicken friends) catch a cold from germs, not matter how hot or cold you may be.
but hey, wtf do I know.
There are three hits at google. It looks like a typical urban legend.
They changed the name to KFC because fried foods became associated with being unhealthy.
I read somewhere that the reason Kentuky Fried Chicken became KFC was to drop Fried from the name, due to the fact that fried foods aren't supposed to be good for you.
If it ain't a Model M, it's a piece of crap.
Farmed chickens are kept inside all day under artificial light.
Don't mean to spoil everyone's fun but I completely fail to see what's funny about breeding an animal so it loses an important part of it's body.
The chicken looks very odd, certainly, but as a joke I find it a bit of a damp squib.
Of course I'm a crazy vegetarian so you can write me off as a nutcase.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Humans have changed every domesticated plant and animal for millions of years. Selective breeding, although slow, is still "genetic engineering."
Look at: cows, horses, dogs, chickens, wheat, corn, potatoes, goats, hell... look at donkeys... we completely f**ked mother nature in that deal.
This method of changing things in our benefit has just gotten more efficient.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Besides the humor value, interesting in that we're creating another species with qualities that suit humans but unsuitable for life on its own.
Well, if you had READ the article instead of just looking at the picture, you would have seen that these chickens actually have a HIGHER survival rate in tropical areas (where it is originally designed to be introduced) becuase the feathers would trap heat that would otherwise kill the bird.
Here so you don't have to strain your eyes actually reading that tiny 12 point font from the first few paragraphs:
"(Boiler chickens) consume a lot of energy in order to grow rapidly but in the process they generate a lot of heat and they have to get rid of it otherwise their internal body temperature will go too high and they will die."
"That's why the growth rate of boiler (chickens) is significantly reduced in hot seasons or hot countries and that is why the poultry meat is expensive in these countries."
By keeping the chickens feather-free, the birds would direct their energy to growing larger rather than keeping cool.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
and
"By keeping the chickens feather-free, the birds would direct their energy to growing larger rather than keeping cool."
These birds are quite well suited to temperate climates. Chickens don't need feathers any more. Growing them just drains energy the birds could put to another use.
So the new KFC still has the Colonel's stylized image, but not the original name.
-wjc.
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
Old Urban Legend, debunked by Snopes.
But all he did was breed (not genetically engineer) two existing types of chicken to produce another breed without feathers.
This is no different to breeding dwarf wheat or pit-bulls.
This time I could be arsed.
Growing up, we usually had anywhere from 10 to 50 chickens. If one chicken lost a few of it's feathers and the skin became exposed, the other chickens would usually begin pecking the poor bird with the missing feathers. We had one chicken that had it's brain exposed from this pecking. (There's a product you can smear on the wound to keep the other chickens from doing this.)
Has this geneticist put any of these featherless chickens together?
Aside from this link, then, you would characterize the existence of any breed of dog as "totally wrong"? Or cows, or even horses?
Kneejerk reaction aside, almost every animal we interact with on a daily basis has been changed to suit our needs. To be honest, we've also changed a bit to suit their needs, too. It's a bit overkill to dismiss all of the last 5-10000 years of animal husbandry as "completely wrong", wouldn't you say?
Come on, give it up, that's
"...we're creating another species with qualities that suit humans but unsuitable for life on its own."
Name a species of animal that is suitable for life on its own.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"Men and women breeding better poultry? What kind of sick experiment is going on there?" - Mike, MST3K episode 702
Six years ago, one of my little cousins referred to all chicken as "Bawk Bawk".
*...imagines her cousin's future, twenty-thirty years from now...*
"Dada, can me have Bald Bald?"
For those unfamiliar, Tilapia is a white fish which originated in Africa. Over the last decade, the fish has been specifically bred to be eaten. That's right, the Tilapia you order at your local seafood restaurant isn't found in the wild. Ironically, nobody seems to care, but this sort of genetic manipulatioon has been going on for ages.
http://www.genomar.com/tilapia.php
Just think of what the 6.4 billion of us and the 13 billion chickens could do together in the future - we could terraform planets and spread ourselves (and the chickens) across the stars... Dude, that's so NOT what we've always dreamed about when we talked about naked chicks from outer space.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Or would that be a Living Rubber Chicken with a Pully in the Middle?
Sorry, I played monkey island a few too many times.
Like silkworms moths (I'm sure there's a better word). These moths cannot mate on their own because their bodies are too unwieldy after having been bred over a couple thousand years. Without Man, they simply would cease to exist, at this point.
I have been pwned because my
such a silly snarky little statement to make. man's been manipulating animals for thousands of years.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
That's right - we muck w/ the natural order-o-things all the time. The Martin, a bird that eats its weight in mosquitos everyday and is a great pesticide depends on humans to survive. Martins roost in nests that are high up and in the open. People put up Martin houses to attract them to their land and now a hundred years later the Martin has lost the ability to make a nest. Without humans constructing Martin houses the species would die out in one year.
but you'll find a lot more meat on a Peruvian Hairless. A friend had one - he was always putting sunscreen on it!! I wonder if the chickens would need that, too.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Well, human instincts is not what makes us humane.
When the animals natural instincs are lost we've passed the line, and we only removed the animals from somewhat natural condition during the last century. And it's already proved that some chickens can't go back to a normal life, while pigs for example can make surprising adaptations if let loose.
And about the parent, I'm glad we've at least stopped cutting of tails here - just too bad for all the pups that can't breathe normally.