Question: why flies and chickens and not other animals?

Cedric Tan answered on 15 Mar 2017:

Very good question Captain America!

A lot is known about both species, and being well-studied, there are a great number of tools and genetic information to facilitate even more studies. For example, we know entire genetic sequence of chickens and flies and therefore we can better understanding how genes can relate to behaviour and diseases and the immune system. Have a look at what my colleague has found in the immune system of the chicken:

Secondly, we can learn from studying these model organisms about ourselves. Did you know that flies share up to about 61% of known human disease genes have a similar match in the genetic code of fruit flies? Also chickens share about 50% of their genes with us. So by studying them, we learn more about what the genes do in us as well.

Last but not least, both chickens and flies have very interesting mating behaviours that help us understand the benefits of doing certain behaviours and hence selection for them over generations. Have a look at the other two videos as see if you can find an interesting similarity between those two species and humans: