Giant chicken
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The giant chicken ( Gallus giganteus ) is a hypothetical wild chicken species described by the Dutch ornithologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck that lives or is said to have lived in East Asia.
The "kind" was included in contemporary descriptions, for example in the monographs by William Jardine and Leopold Fitzinger . They suspected that the giant chicken was ancestral species or ancestral form of various large, heavy breeds of the domestic chicken . Since no animals were found and no type material can be found, it is not scientifically recognized.
Contemporary description
In 1878 Leopold Josef Fitzinger described the giant chicken in his work "Die Arten und Racen des Huhnes" as follows:
“The upper beak is smooth and rounded at its roots, the nostrils are narrow, the feet four-toed, the legs relatively short and thick. The crest is large in the male , but not of particular height, standing upright, simple, leaf-shaped, jagged and drawn out into a point at the back, but considerably smaller in the female . The wattles are double, in the male they are large, long and oval in shape, while in the female they are small, short and almost truncated; the ear lobe in males large, the females but much smaller. The throat is bald, as is the area around the eyes and cheeks. The crown of the head is without a forelock and there is no feather whiskers on the throat . The neck feathers are long, narrow and pointed. The body plumage is not everywhere, but for the most part closed, for in some places and especially on the rump the feathers are separated from one another. The male's tail, which is not carried very high, is quite plentiful, but has only a few long sickle feathers. The legs are bare and armed with very long, strong spurs in the male .
The color of the plumage is different according to the sex.
In the male the neck and the back are light yellow-brownish-white in color and yellow-brown along the feathers, and the fore neck, rump, and tail are of the same color, but they are marked with dark red-brown shaft marks. The chest, belly, thigh plumage and rump are reddish-brown-yellow or ocher-yellow. The small and large coverts of the wings are also reddish-brownish-yellow, while the middle ones are light yellow-brownish-white and so are the wings. The crest, the wattles, the bald skin around the eyes, the cheeks and the throat are purple-red, the ear-lobes white, the legs brownish-white.
In the female , the neck feathers are yellow-brown and along the shafts, which are also colored, are marked with a black-brown spot on each side. The fore neck, the chest, the belly and the rump are dark brown with yellow-brown feather shafts, but the thigh plumage is a single color dark brown. The feathers of the wings are dark brown with light yellow shafts, the wings and the tail are black.
This most distinguished species inhabits - as Temminck reports to us, to whom we owe the first precise report of it - both the forests in the southern part of Sumatra and in the west of Java. According to Gray 's statement , however, it is also said to be native to the mainland of East India, namely in the southern part of Front India, and to be found on the coast of Malabar. [...] "
Literature and evidence
- Coenraad Jacob Temminck: Coq Iago. Gallus giganteus. Pp. 84-86. ( BHL ), in: Histoire naturelle generale des pigeons et des gallinaces , part 2, 1813. doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.64844
- George Robert Gay: List of the specimens of birds in the collection of the British Museum. doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.21658 :
- William Jardine: Gigantic Cock , pp. 171-175 ( BHL ), in: Ornithology. vol. 14 ( Gallinaveous Birds ), Edinburgh: WH Lizars, 1853–1855, S. doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.122734
- Leopold Josef Fitzinger: The types and races of the chickens. Vienna 1878, pp. 33–47. doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.112298