How Rare Are All-Black Chickens?

A few types of chickens are so pigmented that not just their feathers but their very flesh is a deep blue-black color. Learn how researchers think this came about in today's episode of BrainStuff. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren vocal Bomb here. It's not often that
you look at an animal and think, I bet all
the goth kids wish they had a chicken like that.
Meet the Ayam Chamani, the Peter Murphy or Robert Smith
or Lydia Diets or Darth Vader of chickens, pick your

(00:22):
pop culture reference. All visible parts of this chicken's exterior feathers, beak, tongue, comb,
and talons are black, and it would seem as if
the darkness should end there, but not so. It's inky
exterior is just a teaser for the darkness within. It
turns out the bones, organs, and muscles of the i
M Chamani are all black as well, which, in addition

(00:44):
to their rarity, explains why these birds are so popular
amongst chicken aficionados. They're also dubbed the Lamborghini of poultry
because the going price for these guys can range between
two hundred dollars for a single egg layer hen and
five thousand dollars for a full grown mating pair. Native
to the Indonesian island of Java, the i Am Chimani

(01:04):
has been used in rituals and kept as status pets
by the elite. Four centuries they were thought to have black,
enchanted blood that could lift curses or heal ailments, and
strangely enough, the blood is one of the only obviously
normally pigmented things about these birds, aside from their cream
colored eggs. But when you look at an i Am chamani,
the superstitions around its being magicals seem completely rational, because

(01:28):
this chicken is gorgeous in the sunlight. Their plumage isn't
matte black like a charcoal briquette, It's iridescent like a
Hubble telescope rendering of a nebula in deep space. Like
looking into the most hypnotic oil covered petal in the
mall parking lot. These chickens are complete knockouts. But why
what could possibly cause a chicken's flesh and bones to

(01:49):
appear to have been pickled? In India ink. It turns
out i Am Chimani is the world's most extreme example
of a condition called dermal hyperpigmentation or fibro melanosis. Three
other chicken varieties have this condition to varying degrees. The
silky bantam, the Vietnamese kamong and the Swedish swart Juna,

(02:09):
and I couldn't find pronunciations on those last two. I
hope I didn't butcher them too terribly. Research published revealed
that this genetic condition causes strange behavior in chicken embryos.
Precursors to melanocytes, which are the cells that produce the
pigment melanin, the same pigment that gives our human hair, eyes,
and skin dark color. Usually, the precursors to melanocytes in

(02:34):
chicken embryos wind up in just the skin and eyes
of the developing birds, But in chickens with fibro melanosis,
those precursors travel throughout all the tissues of the embryo,
and what's more, they don't shut down at the usual stage. Instead,
they continue to multiply, creating way more melanocytes than usual,
which leads to the hyperpigmentation that we see in these

(02:55):
birds once they hatch. Strangely enough, scientists believe that the
mutation that leads to fibro mellanosis and chickens is so
unusual that it most likely happened only once in a
single bird that lived thousands of years ago. No one
knows how the gene transfers to the globe from one
jet black Bird, but Marco Polo wrote in twelve about
black boned chickens while he was traveling in Asia, so

(03:18):
the gene probably made its way around the world via
trade roots. Interestingly, even though the flesh of the i
Am Chamani looks strange, it reportedly tastes just like chicken.
Today's episode was by Jescelin Shields and produced by Tyler Clang.
Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How

(03:39):
Stuff Works. For more on this and months of other
well picked topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works
dot com and for more podcast for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where every
listen to your favorite shows.