The answer is yes, but it is not common and when it happens it is only for a few seconds.
Many chickens meet their end with a swift blow to the neck. But there are stories that chickens can run around without their heads, and there was even news about a nicknamed chicken that supposedly lived 18 months after a farmer tried – and failed – to kill it by cutting off its head.
Can chickens really survive without their heads? The reality is that sim.
However, they cannot live long like this — less than a minuteexperts explained to .
After decapitation, chickens usually flap their wings and move their paws, he said. Marcie Logsdonveterinarian in the Department of Exotics and Wildlife at Washington State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital (USA).
However, “I think the real running around is quite unusual. Normally they are just strong muscular contractions of both the wings and the legs, and this is something very common”, he added.
“These movements normally last a minute or less”, he detailed.
However, the answer to the question of whether a chicken is alive or dead in the seconds after decapitation depends on how death is defined. In the case of a decapitated chicken, the brain death occurs firstwhile death heart attack happens a few seconds later.
According to a 2019 study in Animals brain electrical activity in chickensthis in 30 seconds after breaking his neck.
In other words, according to the brain death framework, it is true that the chickens survive a few seconds after decapitation.
Andrew Iwaniakcomparative neuroscientist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, specializing in bird brains, see the chicken as alive during these last movements.
Chickens move after decapitation because “there will be some residual neural activity in the spinal cord,” he explained to Live Science.
A continued breathing is also due to residual neural activity. The heart muscles, on the other hand, can continue contracting and relaxing without neural input—until they run out of energy and oxygen.
“Sometimes we see some spasms. This seems to be very pronounced in chickens”, he said, in turn, to the same magazine, Marcie Logsdonveterinarian in the Department of Exotics and Wildlife at Washington State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital
“Miracle Mike”
In September 1945, the farmer Wisconsin Lloyd Olsen he decapitated chickens to take to market, but one of them did not die.
For 18 months, the rooster, who became known as Miracle Miketoured the United States in traveling shows, to showcase this peculiarity.
Olsen fed the rooster through the esophagus and cleared his airways to try to prevent him from choking, but he ended up suffocating to death in 1947.
This story may seem to illustrate that a chicken can live without a head. However, as Live Science points out, there is only one case It is widely known that a chicken can live without part of its head – as Mike’s decapitation left him with the back of his brain as well as an ear.
“It probably retained the brain stem, located at the back of the brain, which controls basic physiological functions such as breathing and regulating heart rate,” Iwaniuk said.
“And it probably also had the cerebellum, which helps coordinate movements,” Logsdon added.
