• TootSweet@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    It feels like (and this may not have been your intention) this question kindof implies an understanding that humans and chickens coexisted for a time and humans didn’t eat the chickens’ eggs until they “decided” one day to try chicken eggs and decided they liked them and would continue the practice. It seems much more likely that humans inherited the practice of eating eggs from their pre-human ancestors. As to chickens specifically, modern domesticated chickens are considered the same species as wild “red junglefowl” from which they were domesticated. Red junglefowl are native to southeast Asia, and humans first made it to there probably between 35,000 and 50,000 years ago. So, if red junglefowl qualify as “chickens”, I think the answer is highly likely that the first humans who encountered them in southeast Asia 35,000 to 50,000 years ago started eating their eggs because they weren’t that different from the eggs of other birds they were already eating and found tasty.