Was kam denn nun zuerst, das Huhn oder das Ei? Für Sally Coulthard ist die Antwort klar: Am Anfang war das Huhn. Unter diesem Titel hat die Britin eine Hühnerchronik verfasst, die sich den Vögeln unter verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten widmet. Sie ist Fan unorthodoxer Tiere. Unter ihrer Feder entstanden bereits Werke über Regenwürmer und Frösche, nun geht es um Henne und Hahn.
Coulthard – selbst Hühnerhalterin – folgt dabei einem Zeitstrahl, der von der Zeit der Dinosaurier bis zur Erkundung des Weltraums reicht. Schließlich stammen Hühnervögel (Galliformes), wie alle anderen Vögel auch, von den Sauriern ab. Gemein hat die Ordnung der Hühnervögel, dass sie dem Leben auf dem Land zugewandter ist als dem in der Luft. Ihr Flügelschlag sieht unbeholfen aus, man denke an Truthähne oder Pfauen. Das Buch konzentriert sich aber auf das Haushuhn Gallus gallus domesticus. Und dessen Wildform, das Bankivahuhn aus Südostasien, Gallus gallus.
Weil es ein Kurzstreckenflieger ist, eignete sich das Huhn zur Domestizierung. Schätzungsweise viertausend Jahre ist es her, dass das Bankivahuhn vom Wild- zum Haus- und Nutztier wurde. Primär dient Geflügel heutzutage als Eier- und Fleischlieferant – der Begriff „Geflügel“ meint damit das Huhn als domestiziertes Nutztier.
Besonders würdevolle Geschöpfe
Doch das war nicht immer so. Hühner haben eine bewegte Historie. In der Antike wurden Hähne mitunter verehrt, in Griechenland standen sie für „Kampfeslust, Stolz, sexuellen Appetit und Wachsamkeit“. Hahnenkampf war ein beliebtes Schauspiel: „Junge Männer waren verpflichtet, zum Zweck der Ausbildung Hahnenkämpfe anzuschauen, und der Philosoph Chrysippus staunte, wie nützlich Hähne seien, um Soldaten für den Krieg zu begeistern und in ihnen das Streben nach Tapferkeit zu erwecken.“
The Christian tradition cannot do without chickens either: Nicholas I, Pope from 858 to 867, decreed that there must be a weathercock at the top of all church towers. The weathercock is reminiscent of the apostle Peter, who denied Jesus three times before the first cock crow, but ultimately became the first pope. The fact that the author sometimes adopts a pathetic tone is not necessarily a disadvantage, as she manages to portray the birds as particularly dignified creatures. A perspective that seems to have been lost today, as she explains later.
Coulthard describes the chicken as a character animal whose meaning changed: from a proud fighting cock with a wide chest to a penned-up broiler chicken with a breast that was bred to be too wide. “During the First World War, the Gallic rooster embodied French resistance and courage in the face of enemy troops, a peasant animal that proudly and bravely stood against the Prussian eagle.” The animal is still present in French heraldry today, for example on jerseys the national soccer team. But also on the plate, in the form of the national dish Coq au Vin.
Breaded chicken breast in space
There is a list of sources for each of the eight chapters. An entire chapter is devoted to metaphors surrounding chickens. The bizarre origins of idioms are explained there in an entertaining way. We learn, for example, what it means to run around like a startled chicken. Or what the sexual charge of rooster and hen is all about: How did the English word for rooster, “cock”, become a synonym for penis and banished from common usage? Why are young women called “chicks”?
In 1923, Cecile and David Wilmer Steele started the first broiler operation in Delaware, USA, when they were accidentally delivered five hundred fertilized eggs instead of the fifty they had ordered. A historic moment for the poultry industry: the chicken coop is now a listed building. Peak absurdity: The fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken shot a breaded chicken breast into space in 2017.
The author conveys the current meaning of the chicken with numbers. There are now three times more specimens of it than all wild bird species combined. 22 billion of these high-performance animals currently live on earth: “Today, commercially raised hens lay eggs all year round, but in the past they took a long winter break before starting again in the spring.” In addition, the chicken is literally on almost everyone’s lips: chicken meat is the most consumed meat, ahead of pork.
Towards the end the book becomes more poignant. According to the author, chickens are “disembedded”, people would not see them as birds with social behavior and characteristics, but as plants that can be harvested – a consequence of industrialized poultry farming, in which a broiler chicken is slaughtered after seven weeks. The Bankiva chicken, on the other hand, can live up to thirty years in the wild. Over the course of breeding, the animals have lost their names; brand names such as Cobb500 or Ross308 are now more common. The breeding animals are not able to survive in the long term.
Sally Coulthard: “In the beginning there was the chicken”. Story of a character animal. Translated from English by Andrea Kunstmann. HarperCollins Verlag, Hamburg 2024. 304 pages, illustrations, hardcover, €24.
#Sally #Coulthards #book #Beginning #Chicken