Domestication effects on the social behaviour of chicken (Gallus gallus)

The domestication process has altered the behaviour of the chicken in different ways. It is mainly the thresholds that have been affected more than the actual behaviour repertoire. The selection pressure in captivity can be either active or passive depending on the environment and the interference by human. An active selection on fear of human seems to change the behaviour according to the domesticated phenotype and it is therefore reasonable to believe that fear of human is a crucial trait in the process of domestication. The change the animal will go through is not only focusing on the appearance but also the behaviour, both in the relation towards humans as well as conspecifics. This thesis focuses on the difference between the domesticated chicken that ancestor the Red Junglefowl. The social behaviour has probably been affected by domestication in different ways, in which all of them are more or less leading to resource allocation since the domesticated chicken spend more energy on many and large eggs than their ancestor the red Red Junglefowl. In other species the domesticated variant are in general more tolerant to a higher density of conspecific as well as they are more sociable.