V: Chicken
How close are chickens to dinosaurs anyway?
Good morning. Today is quintidi, the 5th of Germinal, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate la poule, the animal that tastes like itself.
If you want to visit Jurassic Park in real life, just go to you local zoo and find the bird building. The extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago has been redefined as the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, to clarify that many species (aside from mouse-like mammals and insects and crocodiles) sailed through the old K-Pg extinction event just fine (more or less).
Those dinosaurs that had been lucky enough to evolve beaks and become warm-blooded were able to muster through the dark multi-year winter triggered by the meteor that created the Gulf of Mexico. They had more varied diets – specifically the ability to pick up and gizzard down nuts and seeds – and were less susceptible to cold temperature drops. The cherry on top was that those with lighter bones and feathers could flap their way to equatorial climes, where temperatures were still historically low, but less harsh than in many of the formerly tropic swamps where non-avian dinosaurs lumbered about.
So does that mean chickens are dinosaurs? Not quite. But also yes.
