Seventy years ago, a farmer beheaded a chicken in Colorado, and it refused to die. Mike, as the bird became known, survived for 18 months and became famous. But how did he live without a head for so long, asks Chris Stokel-Walker.
On 10 September 1945 Lloyd Olsen and his wife Clara were killing chickens, on their farm in Fruita, Colorado. Olsen would decapitate the birds, his wife would clean them up. But one of the 40 or 50 animals that went under Olsens hatchet that day didnt behave like the rest.
Their great-grandson, Troy Waters, who is a farmer in Fruita, says, “They got to the end and had one who was still alive, up and walking around.” The chicken kicked and ran, and didnt stop.
It was left overnight in an old apple box on the farm’s screened porch. The next morning, when Lloyd Olsen woke up, he went outside to see what had happened. “The damn thing was still alive,” says Waters.
Waters heard the story as a boy, when his bedridden great-grandfather came to live in his parents house. The two had adjacent bedrooms, and the old man, often sleepless, would talk for hours.
“He took the chicken carcasses to town to sell them at the meat market,” Waters says.
“He took this rooster with him, and he still used the horse and wagon a lot back then.” He threw it in the wagon, took the chicken in with him and started betting people beer or something that he had a live headless chicken. “.
Word spread around Fruita about the miraculous headless bird. The local paper dispatched a reporter to interview Olsen, and two weeks later a sideshow promoter called Hope Wade travelled nearly 300 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah. He had a simple proposition: take the chicken on to the sideshow circuit – they could make some money.
“Back then in the 1940s, they had a small farm and were struggling,” Waters says. “Lloyd said, What the hell – we might as well.”
First they visited Salt Lake City and the University of Utah, where the chicken was put through a battery of tests. Rumour has it that university scientists surgically removed the heads of many other chickens to see whether any would live.
It was here that Life Magazine came to marvel over the story of Miracle Mike the Headless Chicken – as he had by now been branded by Hope Wade. Then Lloyd, Clara and Mike set off on a tour of the US.
They went to California and Arizona, and Hope Wade took Mike on a tour of the south-eastern United States when the Olsens had to return to their farm to collect the harvest.
The birds travels were carefully documented by Clara in a scrapbook that is preserved in the Waterss gun safe today.
People around the country wrote letters – 40 or 50 in all – and not all positive. One compared the Olsens to Nazis, another from Alaska asked them to swap Mikes drumstick in exchange for a wooden leg. Some were addressed only to “The owners of the headless chicken in Colorado”, yet still found their way to the family farm.
After the initial tour, the Olsens took Mike the Headless Chicken to Phoenix, Arizona, where disaster struck in the spring of 1947.
Chickens are amazing creatures that can continue living for a period of time without their heads attached. While most chickens will die quickly after decapitation, there are rare cases where chickens have survived and even thrived for months or years after having their heads cut off. In this article, we’ll explore exactly how a chicken is able to live without its head and look at some incredible examples throughout history of two-legged “zombie chickens” that defied the odds.
Why Can Some Chickens Live Without Their Heads?
Most people assume that chopping the head off a chicken will kill it immediately. This is because the brain is located in the head and the brain controls all of the body’s vital functions like breathing heartbeat, consciousness, etc. So logically, removing the head should eliminate all brain function and quickly result in death.
However, chickens have a unique anatomy that allows some of them to live for extended periods of time after decapitation as long as part of their brain stem remains intact. The brain stem controls unconscious activities like breathing, heartbeat and balance. If those functions continue operating, the chicken can technically stay alive.
According to Dr Wayne J Kuenzel, poultry physiologist at the University of Arkansas, chickens have very few bones in their neck region. This allows their trachea and esophagus to remain flexible. When a chicken’s head is chopped off, these crucial structures are often left undamaged which is key for survival.
Additionally, chickens have a blood-clotting reflex that will quickly seal any severed blood vessels in the neck. This prevents them from bleeding out, which gives the brain stem the ability to keep functioning without oxygenated blood being pumped from the heart.
So in essence, if the cut misses the jugular vein and leaves most of brain stem and one ear intact, there is a possibility of the chicken surviving for an extended period without its head attached. It’s still an extremely rare phenomenon, but the unique anatomy of chickens does make it possible.
Amazing Headless Chicken Survivors Throughout History
Some chickens have been known to live for months or even years without their heads, but most of them die soon after being fatally cut off:
Mike the Headless Chicken (1945)
Mike, a Wyandotte rooster, was the most well-known chicken without a head. He lived for 18 months after having his head cut off in 1945. After an unsuccessful attempt to cut off Mike’s head, Fruita, Colorado farmer Lloyd Olsen chose to care for him instead of killing him.
Mike the headless chicken was fed with an eyedropper and became a national sensation. He went on tour, travelling across the country and was photographed for Time and Life magazines. Mike’s owner charged 25 cents admission for people to see him and earned $4,500 a month (equivalent to $63,400 today). His story shocked the world and remains the record for longest surviving chicken without a head according to Guinness World Records.
Headless Chicken in Thailand (March 2018)
In March 2018, there was a report of another headless chicken surviving and even thriving in Thailand. After its head was accidentally chopped off, the chicken was able to balance on a perch and walk clumsily. A video shows the chicken attempting to preen itself. This headless chicken in Thailand survived for a few weeks thanks to its intact brain stem before eventually dying.
Miracle Mike (September 1945)
In September 1945, the Salt Lake Tribune wrote about Miracle Mike, a five-and-a-half-month-old Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after a farmer tried to kill him by cutting his jugular vein but missed it, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem whole. Mike the headless chicken was fed a mix of milk and water through an eyedropper. When he tried to crow, he made a gurgling sound in his throat.
Brainless Chicken Project (2012)
In 2012, there was a controversial proposal by UK designer André Ford to raise “brainless chickens” optimized for factory farming. Since most of a chicken’s reflexes and functions are controlled by the brain stem, Ford suggested removing the entire cerebral cortex of chickens which he claimed would inhibit their ability to feel pain. Thankfully, this project never actually happened. But it highlighted the extent to which chickens can live without higher brain functions.
How Long Can a Headless Chicken Survive?
Based on these incredible cases, we know that under the right circumstances some chickens can live for months or even years without their heads. However, most chickens will not survive more than a few minutes after decapitation.
According to Dr. A vet named Tom Roudybush says that most chickens die of bleeding within 30 seconds to two minutes. If the cut cuts off their jugular vein and takes out their whole brain stem, they will die quickly from lack of blood or the loss of automatic functions like breathing and heartbeat.
For the rare chickens that keep these basic functions going, they can survive hours or days at a minimum. However, their quality of life is extremely poor. Most headless chickens appear agitated and have trouble balancing or seeing without eyes and ears. They are unable to eat or drink without assistance. Only with round-the-clock human care could headless chickens like Mike live for months or years.
So while it’s physiologically possible for chickens to live without their heads, it’s safe to say most will not make it beyond a few minutes or hours at most before giving out. The famous headless chicken survivors are extremely unique cases and were only able to thrive so long with extensive care from their owners. Going forward, hopefully more humane slaughter methods will be used so chickens don’t have to suffer these gruesome botched decapitations for the sake of human curiosity.
What happens when a chicken’s head is chopped off?
- The brain is cut off from the rest of the body when someone is beheaded, but for a short time, the spinal cord circuits still have oxygen.
- Without input from the brain these circuits start spontaneously. Dr. Tom Smulders of Newcastle University says, “The neurons fire up, and the legs start moving.”
- This happens most of the time when the chicken is lying down, but sometimes neurons will send a motor program to run.
- “Yes, the chicken will run for a while,” Smulders says. “But not for 18 months, more just a minute or two.” ” .
Mike was fed with liquid food and water that the Olsens dropped directly into his oesophagus. Another vital bodily function they helped with was clearing mucus from his throat. They fed him with a dropper, and cleared his throat with a syringe.
The night Mike died, they were woken in their motel room by the sound of the bird choking. When they looked for the syringe they realised they had left it at the sideshow, and before they could find an alternative, Mike suffocated.
“For years he would claim he had sold [the chicken] to a guy in the sideshow circuit,” Waters says, before pausing. “It wasnt until, well, a few years before he died that he finally admitted to me one night that it died on him. He must have never wanted to own up to his mistake and let the goose that lays golden eggs fall to its death. “.
Olsen would never tell what he did with the dead bird. Wassers says, “I’m willing to bet he lost it in the desert somewhere between here and Phoenix, on the side of the road, and was probably eaten by coyotes.”
But by any measure Mike, bred as a fryer chicken, had a good innings. How had he been able to survive for so long?.
The thing that surprises Dr Tom Smulders, a chicken expert at the Centre for Behaviour and Evolution at Newcastle University, is that he did not bleed to death. The fact that he was able to continue functioning without a head he finds easier to explain.
For a human to lose his or her head would involve an almost total loss of the brain. For a chicken, its rather different.
“It’s amazing how little brain is in the front of a chicken’s head,” says Smulders.
It is mostly concentrated at the back of the skull, behind the eyes, he explains.
Reports indicate that Mikes beak, face, eyes and an ear were removed with the hatchet blow. But Smulders estimates that up to 80% of his brain by mass – and almost everything that controls the chickens body, including heart rate, breathing, hunger and digestion – remained untouched.
It was suggested at the time that Mike survived the blow because part or all of the brain stem remained attached to his body. Since then science has evolved, and what was then called the brain stem has been found to be part of the brain proper.
“Most of the bird brain as we know it now would actually be considered the brain stem back then,” Smulders says.
“The names that had been given to parts of the bird brain in the late 1800s were all indicating equivalences with the mammalian brain that were in fact wrong.”
Troy Waters stands next to a statue of Mike in Fruita, which holds the Headless Chicken festival every year in May
Why those who tried to create a Mike of their own did not succeed is hard to explain. It seems the cut, in Mikes case, came in just the right place, and a timely blood clot luckily prevented him bleeding to death.
Troy Waters suspects that his great-grandfather tried to replicate his success with the hatchet a few times.
Certainly, others did. A neighbour who lived up the road would buy up any chickens for sale at an auction in nearby Grand Junction, Colorado, and stop by the family farm with a six-pack of beer for Olsen, to persuade him to explain exactly how he did it.
“I remember [him] telling me, laughing, that he got free beer every other weekend because the neighbour was sure he got filthy rich off this chicken,” Waters says.
“Filthy rich” was an opinion many held in Fruita of the Olsen family. But according to Waters, that was an exaggeration.
“He did make a little money off it,” Waters says. He bought a hay baler and two tractors, replacing his horse and mule. And also – a bit of a luxury – a 1946 Chevrolet pickup truck.
Waters once asked Lloyd Olsen if he had fun. “He said, Oh yeah, I had a chance to travel around and see parts of the country I probably otherwise wouldnt have seen. I was able to modernise and have farm equipment. But it was something he put in his past.
“He still farmed the rest of his life, scratched a living out of the dirt.”
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Miracles are Real | Story of Mike the Headless Chicken | Fruita, Colorado | The Dr. Binocs Show
FAQ
How long do chickens live without a head?
Mike the Headless Chicken (April 20, 1945 – March 17, 1947) was a male Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after he was beheaded, surviving because most of his brain stem remained intact and it did not bleed to death due to a blood clot.
Can chickens survive with their heads cut off?
In the 1940s in the US, a chicken called Mike lived for 18 months without a head. He had been almost completely beheaded with an axe, but crucially the jugular vein and most of the brainstem were left intact.
How long can you survive without a head?
How can a chicken eat without a head?
He fed Mike by using a dropper to put water and liquid food into his esophagus. He also used a syringe to clear out Mike’s throat.
Can a chicken live without its head?
Part of the reason that a chicken can live without its head has to do with its skeletal anatomy, according to Dr. Wayne J. Kuenzel, a poultry physiologist and neurobiologist at the University of Arkansas.
Can a chicken live without a brain?
This phenomenon is known as the “headless chicken” and it has been documented in chickens since 1945. The most famous case was that of Mike the Headless Chicken, who lived for 18 months after his head was cut off. The reason why a chicken can live without its brain is because chickens have an open circulatory system.
Can a headless chicken survive without eating?
Scientists have found that chickens have the ability to store their food in a part of their throat called the crop. With these food reserves, chickens can actually survive without eating for a few days. However, for a headless chicken, the reserves will be negligible as the body’s functioning is severely compromised.
How do Headless Chickens survive?
The bird’s heart will continue to beat, pumping blood around its body and supplying oxygen to its organs. In other words, the chicken can still breathe because oxygen will still get to its lungs through its bloodstream. Another factor that allows headless chickens to survive is their nervous system.
What is a headless chicken?
Headless chickens are a phenomenon that has been documented since the 1940s. It is a strange occurrence that has baffled scientists for decades. The phenomenon occurs when a chicken somehow survives decapitation, and is able to live without its head for days or even weeks. This is possible due to the bird’s unique physiology and biology.
Are Headless Chickens a real thing?
Headless chickens have long been a source of fascination, and the science behind them is even more remarkable. “Auto-decapitation” is the term for when a chicken’s neck muscles contract so quickly that the head is severed from the body. This leaves the chicken without a head.