Parental and Courtship Feeding in Red Jungle Fowl

Abstract

THIS paper describes parental and courtship feeding in a free-living, semidomesticated population of Red Jungle Fowl, Gallus gallus, and discusses their functions and possible origin. Published behavioral studies of unconfined jungle fowl include those of Beebe (1918-1922), Johnson (1963), Collias et al. (1966), and Collias and Collias (1967). Kruijt (1964) and Lill (1966) studied captive Red Jungle Fowl. Wood-Gush (1955) and Guhl (1962) review the behavior of domestic fowl. These authors say little about parental or courtship feeding. The young of gallinaceous birds are precocial, but they need help from one or both parents to obtain food during their first few weeks. Typically the parent locates food and behaves in such a way that the young will get it. The parent may let the chick take the morsel from its beak, drop the food in front of the chick, or use specific calls to alert the chick to the presence of the food. All these behavior patterns I include under the term parental feeding. In many galliforms (Stokes and Williams, MS) the male may perform somewhat similar feeding behavior toward the hen as part of his courtship. This is commonly called tidbitting (Domm, 1927) from the fact that the cock often displays with choice morsels. The Red Jungle Fowl in the 40-hectare San Diego Zoo are unconfined, but each bird belongs to a small social unit and remains within a territory the entire year (Collias et al., 1966). The birds obtain some natural food, but rely primarily upon food provided for other exhibit animals by the zoo keepers and the general public. I made intensive studies largely on the birds of the Monkey Mesa from April through June 1969. I could recognize individually 16 cocks and 22 hens that used this area by means of comb configuration, scars, brood size, and other characteristics. They formed three separate flocks, each dominated by a single adult cock, with little overlapping of home range. The birds were so tame I could feed them at close range. The zoo jungle fowl are normally single brooded with a peak of hatching in April. In 1964 and 1965 the midwinter population ranged between 125 and 142, with cocks making up 56 per cent of the total (Collias et al., 1966). In 1969 I estimated the population at 222 birds, almost double that of 1964 and 1965. In a single afternoon's census on 21 May of almost all the available habitat I counted 124 cocks. These fell into two distinct age classes