This is such an insane fact. Whenever you eat chicken, anywhere in the world, you're probably eating one of just two breeds: a Cobb 500 or a Ross 308. They are the product of decades of R&D by two companies (Cobb-Vantress and Aviagen), resulting in an insane growth rate. A normal chicken can naturally live for a decade, but Cobb 500's and Ross 308's regularly collapse and die before they even reach slaughter age (when they're still babies). And they don't stop growing at slaughter weight. The birds keeps ballooning until the heart and legs give out. So if you simply let a Cobb 500 or Ross 308 keep eating the way it's bred to eat, most don't make it past a few months. Even rescued birds that get careful management (literally being put on diets) can reach at max 1 to 3 years. So we've built a bird that can either eat or survive, but not both. A hundred years ago, we had many hundreds of breeds. Every region had its own - the Barred Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Wyandotte, New Hampshire, Jersey Giant,the Orpington, Sussex, Dorking, Cornish Game, etc. These animals took about four months to reach a kilo or so, foraged outdoors, and could fly reasonably well. We now just endlessly slaughter tens of billions of Cobb 500's and Ross 308's every year. They are the most numerous birds in the history of the Earth. Geologists have even argued their bones will be the defining fossil of our age...