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.
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
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
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.
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".
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.
That's only a concern for one generation tho, which afaik for commercially bred chickens might be just a matter of weeks
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.
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.
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...
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
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 !
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.
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.
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!