Bird Flu on Elementary's Bits and Pieces and Wild Red Junglefowl

Summary: Interactions between domestic chickens and their wild red junglefowl ancestor enable bird flu virus in Elementary's Bits and Pieces May 28, 2018.

illustration of female (left) and male (right) red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) by British illustrator and falconry expert George Edward Lodge (Dec. 3, 1860-Feb. 5, 1954); W. Beebe's A Monograph of the Pheasants, vol. II (1921), Plate XL, between pages 172-173: Not in copyright, via Biodiversity Heritage Library

Southeast Asian red junglefowl assume ancestral aspects as avian antecedents that allow us to appreciate their descendants, domesticated chickens, in the Elementary procedural drama series episode Bits and Pieces May 28, 2018.

Director John Polson and writers Robert Doherty, Tamara Jason and Kelly Wheeler blend bird flu virus H7n5 and compromised chickens into the sixth season's fifth episode. The series' 125th episode overall conveys the catastrophic communication of the avian influenza virus through contagiously casual, natural, opportunistic human contacts with compromised birds and pigs. Phasianidae family chickens, junglefowl, Old World quail, partridges, peafowl, pheasants and turkeys dwell in agro-industrialized, backyard, country, small-town, village, wildlife- and urban-interfaced pig and poultry farms.

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) enlists headless, legless chicken bodies from the neighborhood grocery store since "I find visual aids useful in holding onto complex thoughts."

Store-bought red junglefowl descendants fill Sherlock's table and then trash once Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) fidgets, "How long has that chicken been out of the fridge?"

Wild red junglefowl and domesticated chicken fossils respectively go back 12,000 years to Nanzhuang, northern China, and 7,400 years ago to Chishan, Hebei province, northeastern China. Eastward- and westward-heading red junglefowl heralds Bengali and Indian, Indochinese, Javanese, Myanmarese and Vietnamese junglefowl and domesticated chicken subspecies with biogeographically honed combs, hackels and lappets. Red junglefowl initiate March through June breeding seasons and daily egg-laying in abandoned burrows, hollow tree stumps and isolated depressions under bushy, scrubby, shrubby woody plants.

Sexually mature red junglefowl mothers juggle 18- to 21-day hatching schedules for completed clutches of four to 11.41-ounce (40-gram) white eggs laid daily but hatched simultaneously.

Red junglefowl mothers keep embryos and brown-banded, downy-yellow newborn to two-week-old chicks brooded at temperatures between 98.6 and 103.1 degrees Fahrenheit (37 and 39.5 degrees Celsius).

Newborn launches from egg shells and mother-chick dependencies respectively last 10 to 20 hours and, as flying seven-day-olds through feathered four-week-olds to wing-feathered eight-week-olds, 12 months. Physically and sexually mature red junglefowl females manifest brown bodies with yellow-edged black neck feathers, brown-gray backs and short tails, and black-brown undersides with light-spotted feathers. Red junglefowl, named Gallus gallus (from Latin for "rooster"), net 16.54- to 18.11-inch- (42- to 46-centimeter-) long, 17.11- to 37.04-ounce (485- to 1,050-gram) adult female bodies.

Males obtain red-feathered heads and necks; red-fleshed combs and wattles; red or white ear patches; black-brown undersides; gray legs with foot spurs; blue-green-purple tails white-tufted basally.

Physically mature red junglefowl males, sexually mature before females as five-month-olds, possess 25- to 30-inch- (65- to 78-centimeter-) long, 1.5- to 3.2 pound (0.7- to 1.5-kilogram) bodies.

June through September annually qualify as male moulting months that queue up eclipse plumage of blackening gold neck feathers; duller-colored, smaller-sized combs and lost tail feathers. Wild red junglefowl of flat, gentle-sloped bamboo thickets, mangroves, mountain and secondary forests, plantations and woodland edges reveal arching tails; combless females; gray legs; male moults. Thirty-year life cycles support egg, fruit, invertebrate, seed diets; oil-wicking dust baths; roosting male with one to two other males or with three to five females.

Sherlock's brownstone rooftop, like temperate hothouses within junglefowl sea-level through 8,202.1-foot (2,500-meter) altitudes, theoretically thwarts bird flu transmission and wild red junglefowl habitat loss and poaching.

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) enlists organic chicken product stickers as visual aids in Elementary tv series' Bits and Pieces (season 6 episode 5): CBS Elementary episode 6.05 promotional photo, via SpoilerTV May 23, 2018

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

illustration of female (left) and male (right) red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) by British illustrator and falconry expert George Edward Lodge (Dec. 3, 1860-Feb. 5, 1954); W. Beebe's A Monograph of the Pheasants, vol. II (1921), Plate XL, between pages 172-173: Not in copyright, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/34630946;
Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/61021753@N02/8191092666/

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) enlists organic chicken product stickers as visual aids in Elementary tv series' Bits and Pieces (season 6 episode 5): CBS Elementary episode 6.05 promotional photo, via SpoilerTV May 23, 2018, @ https://www.spoilertv.com/2018/05/elementary-episode-605-bits-and-pieces.html

For further information:

Beebe, William. 1921. "Red Junglefowl." A Monograph of the Pheasants. In Four Volumes. Vol. II: 172-212. London, England: W.F. and G. Witherby.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/34630943

"Bits and Pieces." Elementary: The Sixth Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, May 28, 2018.

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