Relations between chickens and Homo sapiens have always been uneasy.

From humble origins in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the pullet was initially domesticated thousands of years ago not for food, but for cockfighting.

The feathered Evander Holyfields also were recruited for fortunetelling. According to Poultry Oddities (Stromberg Publishing, 1992), Roman soothsayers drew an alphabet on the ground, dropped corn pellets on each letter and then noted which ones the rooster picked.

Something about the approaching millennium seems to have galvanized chicken pride. In 1990, the beady-eyed creature officially surpassed beef as America's most popular meat (80 pounds per person a year, triple the 1960 consumption rate). And conspiracy theorists suggest that recent outbreaks of mad-cow disease in England and mad-pig disease in Taiwan are all part of a chicken coup d'etat.

In the 1950s, scientists discovered that red light soothes the savage chicken. Normally, when a beak battle draws blood, the sight of the gash causes other birds to gang up on the wounded party and peck it to death. In red light, the hens can't see the blood, so they stay docile.

At first, farmers installed scarlet lights in chicken coops, but it was too dark for human workers. Next, someone invented red spectacles, but they kept falling off.

Now, Al T. Leighton, a former poultry sciences professor at Virginia Tech, has patented red contact lenses for chickens. So far, about 100,000 birds have tested the tiny disks, Dr. Leighton says.

When the late syndicated columnist Mike Royko heard about it, he asked: ``How do you teach chickens to put their contacts on and remove them? Won't chicken coops be filled with chickens bending over and looking for dropped lenses?''

But Dr. Leighton says the devices are permanent - and harmless. Although animal rights activists contend the contacts can cause damage, Dr. Leighton insists that chickens' eyes are different from human ones.

Birds have a third eyelid, he says, which blinks behind the contact lens and keeps the eye healthy. Animal ophthalmologist Ned Buyukmihci, of the University of California, Davis, disputes that safety claim, but the contacts are nevertheless expected to go on sale this year.

Chickens are also perverts.

According to Dick Creger, chairman of Texas A&M University's massive poultry sciences department, roosters can mate 20 to 30 times a day, a libido that puts even Warren Beatty to shame.

When chickens lived in the wild, sleeping in trees, this was probably necessary for survival. But with scientists now breeding indestructible superbirds - and the global chicken population at an unsettling 24 billion - the results could be disastrous.

For example, less than a century ago, it took 16 weeks for a newly hatched chick to grow to 2 pounds. Today, a pullet hits 4 pounds in a mere six weeks.

According to Poultry of the World (Silvio Mattacchione & Co., 1996), a few birds have already crossed the 20-pound barrier. And a Cornell University professor discovered that 18th-century classical music causes chickens to gain weight more efficiently.

Is it so hard, then, to imagine an army of 8-foot-tall, red-contact-lens-wearing, Sony Walkman-playing roosters marching on New York City?

Even germ warfare might be useless against the feathered horde.

Normally, the birds are susceptible to scores of illnesses. Until recently, that meant newborn chicks had to be vaccinated by hand. Then someone came up with the idea of injecting the medicine while the chicken was still in the shell.

Within a decade, even that won't be necessary. Dr. Creger says scientists are breeding disease-resistant chickens.

On the plus side, at least these future chickens will taste different.

``Right now, we can reconstitute the meat into something that tastes exactly like shrimp,'' Dr. Creger says. ``And we're working on steak.''

Because chicken is neutral in flavor, it can be ground into a paste, fortified with chemicals that duplicate the flavor molecules of other foods, then reformed into virtually any shape and texture, he explains.

Because the bird is also lower in fat and cheaper than most meats, it could very well replace them, he predicts.

Where's the beef? Upstaged by the beak.