The roosters have a glossy blackish-green plumage and are highly prized for their loud clear calls and striking colouration, while the hens are usually dull and infertile.

Bekisars were traditionally used by the original inhabitants of the Sunda Islands as symbolic or spiritual mascots on outrigger canoes and consequently spread over a wide area.

During the dry season, and also on arid volcanic islands, the green junglefowl gets most of its water from dew in the coastal fog on fruits and insects.

The native peoples of the Sunda Archipelago learned that they could persuade young, unpaired wild green junglefowl males to mate with domestic game hens.

The calls combine the prolonged notes of the green junglefowl with the added volume of domestic fowl, whose wild ancestors' voices had to be heard through dense vegetation.

When the native peoples of Java and the Sunda Islands migrated to Oceania and beyond, they brought with them dogs, pigs, yams, coconuts, and chickens.

Each migration brought a few dozen semi-domestic game fowl, not unlike those seen today running feral in tropical Asian villages.

Nearly every new migration of seafaring people brought game fowl (the semi-domestic chickens descended from the Indonesian red junglefowl Gallus bankiva) to their new island homes.

When competing clans, tribal wars, disease, and typhoons extirpated or very nearly exterminated human populations or forced migrations, feral fowl, pigs, and dogs would often remain on these remote islands.

The male is used in East Java, Bali and the surrounding islands in popular vocal competitions; this practice has caused the decline of wild green junglefowl populations.