You may have heard of feral cats, but have you heard of feral chickens? Feral chickens are now the subject of evolutionary research. And the ones in Tampa's Ybor City and Key West are perfect fodder to study.
Feral chickens are about as synonymous with Ybor City as the cigar factories that put it on the map. Ybor has changed since it was founded in the late 1800's. Now, there are night clubs and restaurants and art shops.
Bill Staton gives tours for the . He said the only thing that's stayed the same are the chickens.
鈥淭he casitas we have here were the small houses that the factory workers lived in. They all typically kept chickens in their backyard which is part of their culture for food or eggs," said Stanton. "When the Cubans started to leave Ybor City in the 1940's when the cigar business started to decline, they tended to just release the chickens into the city.鈥�
Chickens have been roaming around ever since.
It鈥檚 plausible the chickens here are related to feral chickens in Key West. That鈥檚 because a lot of Cuban cigar factories and their workers moved from Key West to Ybor.
Michigan State University Professor Eben Gering, an evolutionary biologist who studies feral chicken populations in Key West and Kauai, Hawaii said there鈥檚 not much known about feral chickens.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a huge literature on the chicken in both agricultural and scientific settings," said Gering. "They haven鈥檛 been studied in ecological framework where they鈥檙e in a wild setting and where it鈥檚 a genetically variable population that鈥檚 evolving.鈥�
Gering is now studying all three populations. He said he鈥檚 looking for any common characteristics and unique idiosyncrasies among them particularly their reproduction and diet, how they live and how they die.
And that鈥檚 why Dylan Breese, president of the , scopes out feral chickens and takes stool samples from them.
鈥淭his is Frankenstein, right here, because he turns green when he goes into the sunlight," Breese said walking among a few chickens. "This is Casper. The black and yellow one is King Arthur, because it looks like he鈥檚 wearing gold chain mail鈥�
Breese attracts the birds with corn kernels. And it looks like there鈥檚 going to be a cock fight.
鈥淎rthur and Casper are new to this area. They hang out across the street," said Breese. "You will see territorial disputes when a new chicken is introduced.鈥�
Breese said new chickens meet each other during his medical testing or when people abandon their pet chickens. He says unlike the ones born in the wild, the new chickens usually don鈥檛 survive.
鈥淭hey do have a lot of natural predators," he said. "Hawks come through, raccoons. There are cats in the neighborhood and they have to contend with traffic and people.鈥�
Breese demonstrated how he collects the samples he鈥檒l send to Gering.
"Open one of the tubes, take a couple of toothpicks and just place into the tube, seal it, label it for recording purposes,鈥� he said.
Breese said the actual stool collecting is about a 15 second process. But it takes more time before that. Hours, he said. He has to actually witness the chicken leave the poop behind. He also has to make sure he鈥檚 not collecting from chickens that are related. And, he said, some chickens are shy about pooping in front of people.
Others are not. In fact, Breese originally started the Ybor Chickens Society to create a more harmonious environment with the chickens and business owners.
鈥淭hey can create some mess. When there鈥檚 an event they can interfere a little bit," Breese said. "So, we try to take care of that so that the businesses and the events can go on peacefully.鈥�
Next year, Gering, the Michigan State University evolutionary biologist, said he鈥檒l have a better understanding of the data being collected.
From the stool samples he hopes to see if there are gene variations between feral chickens and chickens in production settings. He鈥檚 collecting blood samples from the chickens in Key West and Kauai. He does not know what the results will be.
鈥淚t seems feasible, certainly, that the Key West and Ybor chickens have a link," Gering said. "It鈥檚 also possible that those are genetically differentiated populations and that they have completely different ancestry.鈥�
Either way, Gering said, the results will give him insight on the evolution of feral chicken populations and he said if the feral chickens have a gene that has gone extinct in chickens in more controlled environments, the data could tell us how to preserve those bygone genes.
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