Quite a lot to crow about

THE MODERN CHICKEN IS BELIEVED TO HAVE DESCENDED FROM THE RED JUNGLE FOWL (ABOVE) NATIVE TO INDIA, SOUTH-EAST ASIA AND CHINA. IT AND THE OSTRICH ARE THE CLOSEST LIVING RELATIVES OF THE TYRANNOSAURUS REX

- Mridula Ramesh

"Chicken." What ideas does the word bring to mind? I doubt "savior of Western civilization" tops the list. Yet, that's how Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler described the bird, writing in Smithsonian Magazine in 2012. The story they refer to, one of history's turning points, goes like this:

In 480 BCE, the Athenian general Themistocles was on his way to what would become known as the Battle of Salamis. Earlier that year, the Persian ruler Xerxes I had attacked Greece. At Thermopylae, King Leonidas's Greek forces valiantly held back the vastly larger Persian army.

When they were betrayed and the Persian army began to outflank them, Leonidas sent most of his army away and remained, with a small force, to slow the Persian advance. Their heroic sacrifice inspired and united the Greek city-states.

Still, Greek morale was low ahead of the battle at Salamis. They knew they faced a stronger foe. En route, Themistocles and his army saw two roosters fighting. The birds were going at it—no fear, no hesitation, immersed in fierce combat. "Look at them," Themistocles reportedly said. "They don't fight for their country, their gods, or glory. They fight only because neither will yield to the other. When animals are so brave, what's our excuse?"

None, apparently. The Greeks prevailed. In the decades that followed, the Greek civilization produced giants such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, whose ideas and values laid the foundations of Western civilization.

The rooster's fierceness is unsurprising; after all, they, like the ostrich, are the closest living relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex. Sadly, as Adler and Lawler note, "the civilization that [they helped save] today honors those same creatures by breading, frying and dipping them into one's choice of sauce."