Human life is very short, but in this short life, we can see trees growing and grass blooming, everything is so magical and natural, which makes us realize the meaning of life and makes us realize the meaning of life. People have reached a complete understanding of nature, and life needs to be provided. "Eyes can see the world, and the mind can think." However, due to the magic of creation, there are always things happening that we cannot imagine, and there once was an American drone. Mike the Chicken still lived for 18 months after his head was cut off and even toured the country. Is this true?
We all know the importance of the head. It is the main regulator of life functions. No matter whether it is for advanced creatures or ordinary animals, vertebrates cannot escape this law. Of course, invertebrates Animals are not included in this list. With this kind of knowledge, in 1954, a chicken on an American farm was still alive after losing its head, and it survived as long as a year and a half later. Not to mention at that time, even though Nowadays, with the advanced technology, for most people, this is more like a nonsense sensational event, but in fact it is not like this.
Nature is a kind and loving mother, but also a cold butcher.
The beginning of this incident was very simple. In the 19th century in Fruita, Colorado, a farmer named Olson raised a lot of chickens. In September 1945, One day, Olson and his wife discussed the issue of his mother-in-law and his family coming to the farm to play, and considered what to entertain them. Olson himself raised a lot of chickens, and chickens became one of their first choices for dinner. Just like that, Olson After inspecting the chicken farm, we selected several fat and strong chickens.
As Olson, who has many years of experience in raising chickens, he also has his own experience in killing chickens. It is different from the common practice of just cutting a knife on the chicken's neck and waiting for the chicken to slowly die. The method was different. In order to make the chicken die faster, he cut a knife on the neck and then chopped a knife directly on the chicken's head. Most of the chickens he handled ended their lives in this way and then became delicacies on the table. But that's it. Being experienced, he had an accident during the process of killing chickens this time. That is, one of the chickens did not die immediately after losing its head. Moreover, this chicken was just like the usual frightened chickens, jumping around, and then died again. It started walking casually like an ordinary chicken, as if it was a normal chicken.
This was the first time Olson saw this situation, and he was frightened at the time. Therefore, he did not give the tenacious chicken another blow, and the chicken escaped. In this catastrophe, and in this incredible situation, Olson also accepted the fact that the chicken was still alive, and therefore named it Mike.
After Mike got a name, he lived like an ordinary chicken, but without a head, he was destined not to be like an ordinary chicken. We all know that animals eat through their mouths without a head. Mike has lost his mouth, and since Olson has decided not to eat it anymore and has given it a name, he plans to raise it again, but how to raise it is another problem. Although Mike is still alive, If he couldn't eat, he was doomed to just linger for a while, so through careful observation, he found that the esophagus could be clearly seen through the incision on Mike's neck. He thought that maybe he could feed Mike through this esophagus, and generally Chickens eat grains, so Mike will definitely not be able to eat the same food as before.
So Olson mixed milk and water as a nutrient solution and tried to feed it to Mike. This way, the liquid food should be easier for Mike’s body to accept and feed better. After all, Mike only has a small body. If the esophagus is accidentally stuck or blocked, it will be easy to suffocate to death, so Olson carefully used a syringe to inject food into Mike, allowing the liquid to slowly flow into Mike's body through the esophagus, sometimes mixed with some small amounts of food. particles, and in order to prevent these foods from blocking the esophagus, Olson would also carefully clean Mike's esophagus after each feeding to keep the esophagus clean. In this way, under the care of the farm owner Olson, Mike lost his head. After that, he survived like this. Slowly, people in the town knew about it. Then it spread more and more magically. More and more people knew about Mike's headless chicken. Many people asked what it was like. Or, there were even reporters who interviewed Olson and his headless chicken Mike, and reported this incredible incident in the newspaper. Mike's story was widely circulated, and Mike became an "Internet celebrity" .
People’s curiosity for novelty made Mike more and more popular. When an acrobat at the time heard about it, he discovered the business opportunity and discussed with Olson to take Mike on a nationwide tour. The "headless chicken" gimmick brought them very generous returns, and then they planned to create more headless chickens to attract people's attention in order to gain greater wealth, so they began to research headless chickens. How Mike survived, but they only knew about Olson's daily feeding of Mike. In fact, they didn't know why Mike survived. So they took Mike to the University of Utah and invited biologists at the time Solve their doubts.
The biologists were very surprised after seeing the headless chicken. After careful observation and study, they found that the structure of Mike's head was very special. It turned out that the angle at which Olson cut it was very magical. Part of Mike's brain was cut off, but more than 80% of the brain, brainstem, and cerebellum, the main functional centers of the body, were completely preserved. You must know that the brainstem mainly controls heart rate, breathing, and some low-level reflexes. Therefore, The lost part was actually not the core area. This was why Mike could still live a normal life after losing his head. Moreover, the blood that flowed out of his neck at that time solidified quickly, so he did not die from excessive bleeding. After learning about this, After the incident, Olson and the acrobats later killed hundreds of chickens without making a second Mike, so Mike became a unique headless chicken and received special courtesy from them.
Mike continued to tour the United States with Olson and the others. It is said that as long as Mike appeared randomly at that time, he could get a lot of praise from the audience. Therefore, Mike could earn Olson nearly 100,000 yuan a month. 4,500 US dollars. Under such prosperous circumstances, Olson took care of Mike more and more carefully. But even though Olson, who regarded Mike as his treasure, forgot to feed Mike and inject food after a performance. Give it, and just like that, Mike also ushered in its true death. However, after Mike died, Olson did not stop making money. He still used Mike's gimmicks to deceive the audience, and Huangcheng sold Mike to others. , concealed the information about Mike's death, but the news of Mike's death was finally exposed to the public. In this way, after losing the first 18 people, Mike once again ushered in people's more curious hearts, and left people with He was so impressed that the local government decided to mark the third Sunday in May every year as Mike's anniversary, which was called "Headless Chicken Mike Day", and Mike's story has been passed down.
After reading this, many people may be curious. Since there is no head, why do biologists say that Mike’s brain stem is relatively completely preserved? Could it be that its brain components are on its neck? The fact is that this is not the case, but because Mike is headless, it is not really headless, it just means that most of his head was cut off, and ultimately left people with the legend of being headless, which is more to take advantage of people's curiosity. , always adds a thick layer of mystery to the story, and therefore causes many facts to slowly deviate from the original track. A little deviation eventually becomes a legend.