After its head was chopped off, this chicken lived for another 2 years!

In April 1945, during the fierce battle as the United States was advancing into the heart of Nazi Germany, a famous rooster named Mike Olsen was quietly born on an ordinary farm in Freitas, Colorado, USA.

He not only has a name, but also a website named after him. As an ordinary domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), he originally had an ordinary appearance, but he became famous after experiencing a thrilling decapitation.

Mike's ID photo｜Clipmass.com

In September of that year, Mike was beheaded by his owner at his farm in Colorado, U.S., when he was 5 months old. However, he lived on like a legend until March 1947, when he choked to death on a grain of corn in a hotel in Phoenix, U.S., at the age of 23 months.

Although Michael never started a family, he did have a career. Looking back on his legendary life, he started from an ordinary life, broke down and then stood up again. He once had a glorious life that was world-famous and made a fortune every day, but in the end, his life ended in a hasty manner, which led to countless people writing poems and singing praises about him. It is sad and lamentable.

Young and famous

Mike's owner was farmer Lloyd Olson. Mike's specific upbringing is no longer known, but we can only infer from later events that he was healthy and fit, and probably had a good appetite.

No one knew at this time that Mike's life would be very different from that of an ordinary chicken｜Lolame / Pixabay

September 10th of the year he was born was a turning point in Mike's life. That afternoon, Lloyd and his mother-in-law were preparing dinner. Lloyd's wife wanted to eat chicken, so she asked him to go to the yard to catch a little rooster and roast it. Lloyd chose the five-month-old Mike at first sight.

Mike's neck was cut by an axe and his head fell off.

Mike is not dead.

Lloyd watched Mike, who had lost his head, walk and eat rice as if nothing had happened . At that moment, he might have thought of miracles, crazy scientific experiments, ways to make money, or nothing at all. He only knew that Mike could no longer eat.

Escaped｜RitaE / Pixabay

Not only can't eat, but also should be raised well. Although there is a big hole in his neck, Mike can breathe, walk, and sleep with his "head" buried under his wings. He can't crow, but this can't stop him from making crowing movements. Of course, he can't peck at rice, but Lloyd has thought of a way - he grinds the food into powder, mixes it with milk, and uses a dropper to feed the water into Mike's broken and exposed esophagus.

Mike survived. Not only that, he was discovered by a talent scout and soon appeared on Time and Life magazines . Then, he began his 18-month national circus tour.

Feeding Mike with an eyedropper｜hotnewmyanmar.com

Legendary Life Revealed

Mike became famous. Wherever he went, the venues were packed. Audiences spent a fortune just to see his headless figure. When business was at its best, Mike brought Lloyd $4,500 a month in revenue (about $50,000 today).

Among these viewers, some wanted to satisfy their curiosity, some came to condemn Lloyd's cruelty, and some scientists seriously wanted to unravel the mystery of Mike's headless survival.

Mike can't crow like other roosters, but he can still make some noises｜Ralphs_Fotos / Pixabay

In fact, Mike's survival was the result of a combination of biological necessity and a bit of luck that cannot be replicated. The huge eye sockets of birds compress all their brain tissue tightly at the back of their heads near the neck, and Lloyd's axe strike may have been too far forward and high, which happened to leave a little bit of Mike's brain tissue - the brain stem .

And that's enough.

The brainstem consists of the midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata. The medulla oblongata at the bottom, near the spine , is responsible for the most basic activities of maintaining life - involuntary neural activities that do not require conscious participation, controlling basic parameters such as breathing, heartbeat, and blood pressure to maintain homeostasis. The midbrain and pons above the medulla oblongata are also responsible for many important involuntary reactions, including the regulation of sleep cycles.

Bird head structure｜lohdownonscience.com

Mike was able to maintain balance while walking, perhaps because the cerebellum, which is also located at the back and is responsible for balance , was also spared . It may also be due to the two independent motion perception systems of birds - the vestibular system located in the inner ear of the head is responsible for flight balance, while walking balance is controlled by a specialized nervous system located in the lumbar sacral region.

Mike could have died from direct blood loss from the axe, but the timely blood coagulation blocked his ruptured jugular vein and stopped the heavy bleeding.

His success is unrepeatable. The study and understanding of Mike's survival mechanism has made scientists eager to try to clone a headless chicken by beheading it, but in the end, it only adds more dead chickens in this world.

In the history of medicine, many animals have sacrificed their lives for science | Ralphs_Fotos / Pixabay

Mike the Headless Chicken represents an era

The 1940s, when Mack was active, was also a time when people were boldly venturing into the field of neurological treatment. With Phoenix Gage, who survived a puncture in his frontal lobe with an iron rod, leading the way, and Mack’s “if you cut it well, you don’t need your brain” – the controversial prefrontal lobotomy was eventually recognized by the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for its effectiveness in treating mental patients.

It should be noted that the principle of lobotomy is not clear, there is no precise positioning and standardized operation, and it has even been abused, causing many tragedies . Later, people realized that simply damaging the lobe would cause irreversible and unpredictable damage, and this operation was gradually banned.

Lobotomy | nihrecord.nih.gov

In the Soviet Union, scientists also showed in the 1940 experimental documentary "Organism Resurrection Experiment" that they separated the head and body of a dog, or took out its heart and other important organs, and then tried to keep it alive only with an external life support device. Mike's deeds may also provide them with some new ideas.

Although it seems that these experiments would definitely not pass approval today, the ethical standards of the scientific community at that time had not yet been fully formed, so there were actually many similar experiments. Friends who are interested can also go and see the real video footage of that time.

The 1940 film "Experiments in the Resurrection of Organisms" recorded how scientists performed organ transplants on dogs. The picture shows a dog's head connected to an experimental instrument in the movie.

Headless Mike is a rare animal in the vertebrate world. For some arthropods, it is a basic operation to survive without a head or brain. Arthropods can breathe through spiracles all over their bodies, control basic action reflexes through ganglia in their bodies, and the low blood pressure caused by the open circulatory system prevents them from dying from blood loss due to beheading. So sometimes, even if we flatten the cockroach's head, its body can continue to dance for several weeks until it starves to death.

Arthropods also have their own survival strategies｜hhach / Pixabay

A legendary life ended by corn kernels

Back to Mike.

Compared to the surprise brought by Mike's first "death", his real death came very suddenly and sloppily. He choked on a grain of corn. Unfortunately, his owner Lloyd happened to drop the syringe used to clean his esophagus at the performance that day, and Mike choked to death.

Even though Mike might not be truly alive when only his brain stem is alive, but just a zombie - it depends on how you define being alive, especially for a chicken.

A legendary life ended by a grain of corn｜furbymama / Pixabay

Now, although Mike is dead, his presence is still active. Back then, poets wrote poems for him, and later punk bands wrote songs for him. His hometown, Freita, even regarded him as a cultural tourism idol, and held the "Headless Mike Festival" every year. In some sharp political commentaries, Mike has even become an image, alluding to those social management systems that have lost their independent consciousness and survive only by reflex.

I wonder if Mike would be so confused that he would crow if he saw this in the sky - if he and his head were finally reunited.

Mike himself is probably confused｜barskefranck / Pixabay

References

[1] Beheaded Chicken Lives Normally After Freak Decapitation by Ax. (1945, October 22). LIFE. http://life.time.com/curiosities/mike-the-headless-chicken/#ixzz1zVB8AP4d

[2] Choi, C. (2007, March 15). Fact or Fiction?: A Cockroach Can Live without Its Head. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-cockroach-can-live-without-head/

[3] Iordanova, R., & Reddivari, A. (2022). Neuroanatomy, Medulla Oblongata. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing.

[4] Making the headless chicken squawk. (1988). Lancet (London, England), 2(8617), 941–942.

[5] Mashour, GA, Walker, EE, & Martuza, RL (2005). Psychosurgery: past, present, and future. Brain research. Brain research reviews, 48(3), 409–419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresrev.2004.09.002

[6] Mike the Headless Chicken. (2022, September 21). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

[7] Necker, R. (2006). Specializations in the lumbosacral vertebral canal and spinal cord of birds: evidence of a function as a sense organ which is involved in the control of walking. J Comp Physiol A, 192, 439–448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-006-0105-x

[8] Takata, Y., Oishi, Y., Zhou, 10080–10092. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0598-18.2018

[9] The Rooster. (1945, October 10). TIME. https://web.archive.org/web/20090131170343/http:/www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,776319,00.html

Author:yab

Edit: Xiu Xiu

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