[EnderWiggins]

"the numbers which must have escaped in all that time have to be in the billions. "

Oh... where are they then? These billions of escaped chickens you seem to think are running around somewhere?

[muawiyah]

We've had a population of "wild chickens" living in and around the I95/I395/I495 intersection for a number of years ~ lots of open space there, multi-level living in fact ~ and few predators.

Some of my Salvadoran neighbors have made it a practice to catch wild chickens there for Sunday dinner.

What had happened about 25 years back was a truckload of live chickens crashed. The cages broke open and the chickens ran away.

[wendy1946]

"the numbers which must have escaped in all that time have to be in the billions. "

Oh... where are they then? These billions of escaped chickens you seem to think are running around somewhere?

I thought it was fairly obvious that "in all this time" meant over the last 4000 - 6000 years or so of recorded history. Most of those chickens are dead. Old age, if nothing else...

The one place NONE of them are is directly overhead, at an altitude of 200' or more above ground level. THAT is the thing which cannot re-evolve.

Likewise you can play with the genetics and produce a chicken with teeth. What you won't manage to produce is a chicken which can kill and eat prey animals WITH those teeth. THAT, and flying 200' above the ground, are examples of what I mean by complex traits.