Chicken-pigeon Hybrids

EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ

This page was a draft for a section of my now-finished book on distant hybrids, available here >>

Above: An ostensible pigeon-chicken hybrid.

chicken-pigeon hybrid

A pigeon cock willingly mating with a chicken (source).

Caution: Although the sheer anatomy of these birds (pigeon head + chicken body) strongly indicates they are pigeon-chicken hybrids, this cross, which would be interordinal (Galliformes × Columbiformes), has not been confirmed via controlled breeding experiments.

Videos exist on YouTube showing birds that appear to be chicken-pigeon composites (example). Thus, the bird at right is reported as having been produced in China in 2017. In general, these animals have the heads of pigeons, but the body of a chicken.

Certainly pigeon cocks will willingly mate with hens, as shown in the video at right. So there is no behavioral or physical barrier in this cross. But what about physiological barriers? If pigeon semen is delivered to a hen’s cloaca, can anything come of it?

Those who believe that such a hybrid would be impossibly distant assert that such birds are merely a chicken-like breed of pigeon and not hybrids at all. However, people often forget that many existing breeds of both birds and mammals are known to have been produced via hybrid crosses, the beefalo (from bison × cattle) and the red-factor canary (Serinus domesticus × Carduelis cucullata) being prominent examples.

So the mere fact that they have been described as breeds (e.g., Modena breed, or Banat Chicken Pigeon breed) does not preclude the possibility that these birds—supposed pure pigeons with chicken traits— actually have a forgotten hybrid origin. As Zirkle (1935), points out, when a breed is fertile, it’s easy to forget that it was derived from hybridization.

Giambattista della Porta

And there are in fact old accounts of breeders producing pigeon-chicken hybrids, which would explain how the various breeds that look like pigeon-chicken hybrids were first developed. Thus, in explaining how to produce various avian crosses, the Neapolitan scholar, polymath and playwright Giambattista della Porta (1658, p. 45), who spent the larger portion of his life on scientific endeavors, claimed to have produced pigeon-chicken hybrids and gives his readers instructions for doing the same:

A Chick gendred of a Pigeon and a Hen: The pigeon must be young, for then he hath more heat and desire of copulation and more abundance of seed. For if he be old, he cannot tread. But young Pigeons do couple at all times, and they bring forth both Summer and Winter. I had myself at home a single Pigeon & a Hen that had lost her Cock. The Pigeon was of a large size, and wanton withal. The hen was but a very small one. These lived together, and in the Spring-time the pigeon trode the Hen, whereby she conceived, and in her due season laid egges, and afterward hatched them, and brought forth chickens that were mixt of either kind, and resembled the shape of both. In greatnesse of body, in fashion of head and bill, they were like a Pigeon. Their feathers very white and curled, their feet like a Hen’s feet, but they were overgrown with feathers, and they made a noise like a Pigeon.^† And I took great pleasure in them, the rather, because they were so familiar, that they would sit upon the bed, or nuzzle into some woman’s bosom.

† Note: Generally speaking, when a hybrid’s head and throat are more like those of one of its parents, its voice will also be more like that parent’s.

Incubation: The incubation time of a pigeon egg is about 17 days, that of a chicken’s, 21.

Chromosome counts: A diploid somatic cell from a pigeon (Columba livia) has a total of 80 chromosomes (2n = 80), that of a chicken (Gallus gallus), 78 (2n=78).

This book, Telenothians, is filled with interesting facts about distant hybrids like chicken-pigeons. Get it here >>

So, at least according to Porta, the direction of this cross would be male pigeon × hen (as seen in the video above), although it is conceivable that it might also work the other way around. It should perhaps be pointed out that, if these breeds were in fact developed from such hybrids, then at least some of F₁ hybrids initially produced from this interordinal cross must have been capable of producing offspring. And, like most hybrids that are able reproduce themselves and that eventually become breeds, their origins tend to be forgotten, because there is not the sterility, as in the common mule, that lingers on to point to their origins.

And what are the birds in the video below, if not chicken-pigeon hybrids?

A pigeon with large webbed feet >>

Chicken-duck hybrids >>

Bibliography >>

By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).

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