Is there any reason why almost universally chickens and cows are the go to farm animal? Like why aren’t there cultures where people are allergic to their produce and meat? Or we just got really lucky and domesticated the species that seems to just work for most if not all societies. Just seems weird that we picked cows and not some other big game like some bison or something. Why chickens? Why not ducks or geese?
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It’s a mix of the animal’s temperament and usefulness. Cows grow fast, are useful, and are fairly easy to control near human settlements. Bison are similar, but they’re faster and bigger (i think maybe meaner?) and also didn’t work well with the semi-nomadic lifestyle of the plains Native Americans (they’d rather just follow than tame them). Elephants are too slow growing and intelligent/independent to easily raise for slaughter.
Chickens are small-ish and tend to stay in groups. Several species of duck and goose get hella territorial for most of the year and want large areas of water for nests. Also, chickens not being able to fly well helped us catch and keep them. We could keep songbirds for meat, but it’s almost not worth it for so little meat per bird. Chickens also can be left to wander, but they’ll always come back to their homes and aren’t migratory.
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