Humans have been essential in creating the modern day, egg-laying hen. Our anthropocentric justifications for using domesticated fowl throughout history has contributed to their evolution in ways that would never have occurred without our initial and ongoing intervention.
In other words, humans have acted and continue to act, as an artificial agent for natural selection. This is more true today given our technological capacity as it relates to the manipulation of hens at the genetic level. Today’s hybridization of an entire species has been purely for commercial purposes. We have commodified living beings and in so doing demoted the sanctity of sentient life itself.
What are the origins of today’s egg-laying hen? Domesticated fowl
likely evolved from jungle fowl in Southeast Asia and spread west
towards India, Africa and eventually to Europe through trade and
military conquest. Fowl were used for a variety of purposes from
entertainment (cockfighting), meat, eggs and even religious
sacrifice. Wild, or jungle fowl, typically laid eggs for the
purposes of procreation like most other species.
Their laying cycles were seasonal and commonly produced a brood in
the spring. It is possible that “the breeding of hens to encourage
egg laying may have begun as long as five or even ten thousands
years ago.”1 Humans may have taken eggs from a nest for the purposes
of either eating them or preventing them from hatching.
....
Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.