Ever feel like a chicken with your head cut off when frantically running around? Well, Mike the Headless Chicken knew that exact feeling after living 18 months without his head.
As strange as it sounds, Life magazine actually reported the bizarre story in its October 22, 1945 issue.
Known as Miracle Mike, Mike the Headless Chicken was beheaded on September 1945 by L.A. Olson, the wife of a farmer named Lloyd Olsen from Colorado. Olson aimed to keep as much of the neck intact because roasted neck meat was to be served for dinner. As a result, not all of the chicken's brain was chopped from its body.
"Mrs. Olson took Mike to the chopping block and axed off his head. Thereupon Mike got up and soon began to strut around.... What Mrs. Olson's ax had done was to clip off most of the skull but leave intact one ear, the jugular vein and the base of the brain, which controls motor function," Life reported.
Mike lived.
The angle of the axe allowed for the cerebellum and the brain stem to remain in the neck even though most of the head was removed.
"Because the brain is at that angle," Wayne J. Kuenzel, a poultry physiologist and neurobiologist at the University of Arkansas says, "you still have the functional part that's so critical for survival intact."
The chicken staggered around the same way any other chicken would after getting the axe, but then settled down and began acting normal. He started to peck at the ground with his stump and even made some noises. Because his cerebellum was spared, he could still perform basic motor functions.
The day after Mike the chicken was beheaded, Mrs. Olsen found it "sleeping with other chickens, his neck tucked under his wing." Feeling sorry for it, the Olsen's took care of the Headless Chicken, feeding him with an eyedropper. He sometimes even got small grains of corn as a treat.
The Headless Chicken was featured in Time Magazine and Life, as well as the Guinness Book of Records.
Mike the Headless Chicken became a sight-to-see, making $4,500 a month with a value of $10,000. He died in 1947 while on a national tour after the owners lost the tool used to clear fluid from his throat.
