24: Mike the Headless Chicken
The Rooster who Survived for Eighteen Months After Being Decapitated
Born: Most Likely Fruita, Colorado, United States of America*
Died: c.1946-17 March 1947, Phoenix Arizona, United States of America
Mike was a Wyandotte Rooster who literally survived for an entire year and a half after having his head chopped off. This is an actual, true story, with photographic evidence to prove it, as shown above.
In October of 1945, LIFE Magazine even ran an article about Mike, and TIME Magazine picked up the story as well.
As the story goes, on 10 September 1945, a famer’s wife in Colorado decided she wanted to cook a chicken for dinner. When someone usually cooks a chicken, the first stop on the journey is to remove the chicken’s head, which USUALLY kills the fowl. Not this time. According to the LIFE Magazine article, the farmer’s wife swung her axe and managed to hit the poor rooster just wrong. Instead of near-instant death, instead the housewife hacked off most (but not all) of the skull, leaving one ear intact, along with the jugular vein and the base of the brain. Evidently in chickens, the majority of the brain is not behind the eyes but further back in the skull closer to the neck. The base of the brain controls motor function, enabling the poor rooster to keep on…well not clucking but you get the point.
(Encyclopedia Britannica claims it was the farmer himself who did the chopping, and not his wife! Apparently, the farmer was preparing chickens to sell at market the next morning in this iteration of the story).
The rooster immediately became a curiosity, and was put on tour all over the Southwestern United States. He visited carnivals, fairs, and other public events, with hundreds of people paying money to see the curious bird.
Mike was able to survive eighteen months by humans feeding him manually, using an eye dropper to drop sustenance directly into his esophagus, which was accessible through the open hole in his neck. It is believed a blood clot formed and stopped him from bleeding to death after the initial blow. Sadly, Mike passed away after suffocating from a mucous buildup in his neck that his human handlers were not able to clear in time.
Today, Mike’s legacy lives on with an annual festival to celebrate this whacky story in his hometown of Fruita, Colorado. He has also been given the title of the rooster with the longest life span after decapitation by the Guinness Book of World Records.
*Mike's Wikipedia lists an exact birth date in 1945, but considering no other source lists that date and I haven't been able to confirm it, I did not want to definitively list it here. Similarly, one source listed his death date as being in 1946, but all the rest listed the 1947 date.
Sources:
https://www.life.com/animals/life-with-mike-the-headless-chicken-photos-of-a-famously-tough-fowl
https://www.britannica.com/story/how-mike-the-chicken-survived-without-a-head