How Long Can A Chicken Live Without A Head?

If someone is acting in a frenzied manner, one might say they are running around like a chicken with its head cut off. It's an idiom that paints a vivid picture of the intersection between excitement and confusion, but it raises an important question: how can a beheaded bird run around at all in the first place?

Separating the head from the body severs the spinal cord, meaning the brain can no longer send any of the signals necessary for a body to function. An animal like a chicken or a human can't live without a brain, but at the same time, it doesn't take an entire brain to survive. Some people have lived with significant portions of their brains missing, and it's this type of scenario that can make a chicken run around with its head cut off, usually for at least a few minutes, but potentially for well over a year.

A chicken's brain is situated differently from that of a human. The bird's skull is largely taken up by its massive eyes, and the brain itself is situated far back in the head at an angle. A clean cut across the neck of a human will separate brain from body entirely, but the same cut across the neck of a chicken can leave a part of the brain still within the neck. This remaining portion can send nerve impulses that make a chicken run around immediately after beheading, but it usually dies within minutes due to blood loss. However, there was one extraordinary circumstance where a chicken managed to live without its head for 18 months.

In September of 1945, a couple named Lloyd and Clara Olsen were killing chickens on their family farm in Fruita, Colorado, when they noticed that one of the birds wouldn't stop running around, long after all the others were dead. They put the headless chicken in a box overnight, and were stunned to find it still alive the next morning. The Olsens' beheaded bird soon became the talk of the town, and within a month, a traveling sideshow promoter had convinced them to market the fowl as "Miracle Mike, the Headless Chicken." With Lloyd and Clara along for the ride, they set out on a nationwide tour.

Mike was indeed a miracle, for while other chickens swiftly bled to death after having their heads cut off, he had a blood clot that stopped this from happening. All the parts of his brain responsible for heart rate, breathing, digestion, and movement remained. Although Mike had no mouth, he survived on liquid food placed directly into his throat from an eyedropper, and although he could not clear his throat, the Olsens did so manually with a syringe. Unfortunately, one night they forgot the syringe on the road, and Mike suffocated. It had been a full year and a half since his beheading. His story lives on as a lesson in the bizarreries of the nervous system, and to this day, the people of Fruita, Colorado celebrate him with the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival.