Chicken in South America

An unusual variety of chicken that has its origins in South America is the araucana. Araucanas, some of which are tailless and some of which have tufts of feathers around their ears, lay blue-green eggs. As J. Gongora reports, some people have suggested that they predate the arrival of European chickens brought by the Spanish and are evidence of pre-Columbian trans-pacific contacts between Asia and South America. (J. Gongora, et al., "Mitochondrial DNA sequences reveal a putative East Asian ancestry for old Chilean chickens," Proceedings of the International Conference on Animal Genetics, ISAG 2006, Porto Seguro, BA, Brasil.)