How would you design a chicken?

I understand the interest in a novel kind of engineering, and this seems to be more of a thought exercise than anything else. I also understand that not everyone shares my views on animals, but this is such an awful exercise. This absurd mechanization of a living creature is just disgusting. Modern factory practices already deny animals of so many of their natural behaviors. This kind of thinking totally lacking in empathy and consequences scares the hell out of me.

For what purpose are we designing the chicken?<p>If we're designing it as a food animal, I'd maximize the meat area and try to minimize the rest. I'd reduce the amount of body fat naturally carried. If possible, I'd take a page from "Top Secret"[1] and make the bird perform photosynthesis.<p>If we're designing a good prey, I'd make it smaller and give it better wings for flight.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Top-Secret-John-Reynolds-Gardiner/product-reviews/0316303631" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Top-Secret-John-Reynolds-Gardiner/prod...</a>

I would like chicken to have a programming interface so I could write automated scripts. For example, if an event is sensed that an egg is coming, then walk to my boiler and tweet. By tweet, I mean tweet like a chicken, or if you like, tweet like a chicken <i>and</i> tweet through the Internet.

There's no point in redesigning <i>the</i> chicken, because we already have quite a few kinds. And yes, they are already optimized through primitive genetic engineering techniques for various characteristics useful to humans: early maturity, large breast size, egg production speed, taste (or lack thereof) and so forth... not all in the same variety, of course.<p>Diversity builds resilience. When the genome development environments go online, I recommend that we open source the chicken and let a million variants cluck. Now, BSD, MPL or GPL?

Spin the chicken in a centrifuge so that it lives in 2.5G and develops far more muscles:<p><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13318124.900-review-spin-a-chicken-.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13318124.900-review-sp...</a>

Stackable, of course: <a href="http://mydailycow.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/far_side_cows.jpg?w=500" rel="nofollow">http://mydailycow.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/far_side_cows....</a>

"How would you avoid the impeding PETA backlash" is another good question...

If it's going to be of any help for world domination, or at least in serving as a good guard chicken, it'll need the personality of a goose, the fangs and venom sacs of a deadly snake and the talons of an eagle. Something will have to be done to make it sound more intimidating as well, so we should add a rattle on its tail. Oh, and unlike a regular chicken, the wings should be functional in order to control the skies. Behold the fully-realized rattle-chicken.

This prompts some interesting questions. Could you design a brainless chicken or one with just enough brains to eat, breathe and lay eggs? And would that be more or less horrible compared to the way chickens are currently being treated in factories? Where's the line between vat grown meat and brainless chickens?

Simple, you have two versions of the chicken - one optimized for eggs and one for meat.<p>As an extension to the meat chicken I would like to see extra re-generating legs, a bit like how lizards loss and regrow their tails through autotomy.<p>They would come with their own super-oven, so you press a switch and they self-cook in 2 seconds. Pooof!

At least the meat problem is already solved: <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/beyond_meat_fake_chicken_that_tastes_so_real_it_will_freak_you_out_.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/...</a>

Screw redesign. Why not turn the chicken into a raptor-like dinosaur?<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_from_a_chicken.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_fro...</a>

Obviously they should be cube shaped, to facilitate more efficient shipping.

I expected growing meat and eggs from cell cultures.

I wonder how long until GM hackers can prototype their new chicken design.

For some bizarre reason, this reminds me of the human centipede.

Start with the egg