It is common knowledge that no animal or human can survive for long after being beheaded, but today we will tell you about a rooster that survived for 18 months despite being beheaded, and during this time, this rooster not only became famous around the world but also made its owner rich.
70 years ago, on September 10, 1945, a farmer named Lloyd Olson in the US state of Colorado was slaughtering chickens with his wife Clara for sale. But that day, out of 40 or 50 chickens, one chicken did not die despite being slaughtered and continued to run around like the other chickens.
Lloyd Olson put the decapitated chicken in a crate of apples overnight, and the next morning Olson was surprised to see that the chicken was still alive. Olson named the chicken Mike and took Mike with him when he started taking the severed chickens to the market to sell. He wanted to tell people that he had a live chicken despite its decapitated head.
The news spread to the surrounding areas, and a reporter from a local newspaper even came to interview Olsen, and a few days later, a circus owner traveled 300 kilometers to reach Olsen and offered to take this rooster to the circus and earn money. Olsen accepted the circus owner's offer.
Lloyd Olson and Clara participated in circuses in several cities in the United States with this severed rooster, but unfortunately, the rooster died in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1947.
How was Mike fed?
According to a report published on the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC, Mike was given liquid food or water directly through a dropper through his food pipe, while his throat was cleaned with a syringe.
Mike's death: Accident or negligence?
The report states that on the night of Mike's death, Olson was sleeping when he heard the sound of a bird suffocating, which made Olson sit up. He immediately tried to find the syringe, but he remembered that it had been left at the circus. Before Olson could find something to clear the rooster's throat, the rooster died.
After Mike's death, Olson kept telling people for many years that he had sold Mike to the circus owner, but before his death, Olson admitted that Mike was dead.
How did the rooster survive for 18 months?
According to British media reports, Dr. Tom Smulders, a rooster expert at Newcastle University in the United States, says that "when a human's head is cut off, his brain is also separated, but in roosters this is different. In roosters, a little bit of the brain is in front of the head and more of the brain is behind the eyes."
British media reports that Mike's beak, face, eyes and ears were severed by the axe blow, but 80 percent of his brain and body-controlling organs remained intact.
It is said that this decapitated chicken underwent several tests at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, during which scientists also cut off the heads of several other chickens to see if it would survive or not, but the scientists were unsuccessful.
The reason for this is said to be that the place where Olson struck with the axe was correct and at that time, the blood did not clot and Mike did not die, while this would not have happened with the scientists' blows.
