The Problem With Superchickens

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scientists recently discovered a fascinating paradox: when they bred together superproductive, egg-laying hens, they found the chickens produced fewer eggs. We examine what went wrong with these so-called superchickens, and we look at human examples of this phenomenon—a high school Model UN team and a retail giant. For more information on this episode, visit natgeo.com/overheard. Want more? David Sloan Wilson’s theories on competition and cooperation go far beyond superchickens. Take a look at an article he wrote about rethinking economics on Evonomics.com, a website started by one of his former students. And for more on his work, visit davidsloanwilson.world. Plus, retail has been through a lot over the last 50 years. To learn more about that world from the inside, check out his book, Remarkable Retail: How to Win and Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption, and his podcast, the Remarkable Retail Podcast. And read a Bloomberg article that goes into detail about what happened at Sears. Also explore: Darwin transformed the world with his evolutionary theories. He also got a lot wrong. To learn how modern science is building on his work, see our article on the subject. For subscribers: Evolution hasn’t stopped, but it is changing. Discover how humans are using technology to shape their own evolution in our article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let's start with the riddle.
0:07.8	Picture a long flat building in rural Indiana surrounded by corn and soybean fields.
0:14.4	There are thousands of chickens inside.
0:17.3	Oh my goodness, it was a lot of noise there.
0:24.5	It was falling and you were rooster sounds and you were popping up and you were telling
0:30.5	it.
0:31.5	That's Bill Muir, a professor emeritus at Purdue University specializing in genetics.
0:36.1	But the females, you know, they're pretty quiet except they pack a lot and they're picking
0:39.8	on the ground and they're kind of sometimes pecking with each other and sometimes they
0:43.7	would be a fight and they'd be squawking and screaming going on.
0:49.9	Bill is surrounded by chickens because he is running an experiment.
0:54.5	He is making super chickens.
0:58.9	Bill picks out the hands that lay the most eggs and then he breeds them together for a few
1:02.9	generations.
1:03.9	I assume some roosters were involved.
1:06.3	Then he gathers all these hyperbred super chickens.
1:08.9	He puts them in cages together and compares them to cages of regular chickens.
1:13.6	How many eggs do you think the super chickens produced compared to the regular chickens?
1:17.4	A few more, twice as many, ten times.
1:23.3	Here's where it gets weird.
1:25.0	The regular chickens produced more eggs than the super chickens.
1:29.7	What happened there, do you think?
	...

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