This All-Black Mutant Chicken Is the Most Brutal Chicken
It'll cost you $2,500 to eat this bird.
The arc of evolution is long, but it bends towards that which is most metal. Now blackness has emerged from within the poultry gene pool to birth the world’s darkest chicken. The fact that it might also be the world’s most profitable chicken is no mere coincidence.
Nautilus reports Florida’s Greenfire Farms is cashing in on the booming market for its Ayam Cemani, the victim/beneficiary of a mutation that affects its pigmentation. “The bird is inky black from the tip of its comb to the end of its claws, with blue-black skin, jet-black eyes, and a black tongue. It is covered in shimmering metallic black feathers, and even its internal organs are black,” writes Nautilus journo Kat McGowan. You want one? Of course you do. Good luck. An Ayam Cemani can fetch as much as $2,500, leading the chicken farming press to dub them the Lamborghini of Poultry. Or you can buy about 15 average chicks, the Honda Accord of chickens, for about $85.
The birds were developed in Indonesia and are more common there, but the United States bans imports for fears of avian flu. In the U.S. and Japan, the chicken has significant use in spiritual and religious rituals. Stateside they’re so valuable scammers are even reportedly trying to sell knock-off Ayam Cemani. Whether that entails dipping a chicken head to toe in India Ink or just advertising a level of savagery your chickens aren’t willing to commit to is uncertain. Either way, being scammed out of thousands for a counterfeit chicken is not metal.
