Just imagine, if human beings still maintain a normal life routine, eat and sleep normally after being decapitated, it is probably a supernatural event. Because the brain plays a very important role in the human body, the brain dominates the various organs of our body and regulates the balance between the body and the environment. Therefore, in our cognition, without a brain, living things are bound to die.
There is a rooster in the United States, and it is very special and breaks our common perception. After it was decapitated, it was still able to eat, and it was gaining weight, and it had grown nearly threefold. You may think it's a fantasy, but it's real, and this strong rooster is called "Mike."
One day in 1945, the farmer Rodio's mother-in-law was coming tomorrow, and he was going to pick a chicken and kill it to entertain his mother-in-law. Then he took a fancy to the five-month-old rooster Mike, and the process of slaughtering chickens was already familiar to Rodio. He cut off Mike's head first, and Mike, like the other chickens, kept gushing blood from his neck and struggling, and then Rodeo threw it on the farm to bleed.
The next day, something startling happened, and Mike was still walking around the farm the next day after yesterday's slaughter. This aroused great interest in Rodeo, who did not dare to entertain his mother-in-law with the chicken anymore. After some time of observation, he found that the headless chicken still had its neck extended and whimpered as before, but its head was gone, it could only make a faint and hoarse sound, and it could make the same movements as other normal roosters. Although it has no head and no beak, it will still make a pecking motion with its head down, and occasionally take its non-existent beak to look down and sort out its feathers.
Rodio began to find ways to keep the chicken alive.
At the time, Rodio had only one small farm to support his family, and life was sometimes difficult because of poor harvests. But because Mike's affair made him a household name, an acrobatic troupe invited him to take Mike on a tour of the country, and Rodeo couldn't resist the generous monetary reward and agreed without hesitation.
Mike first went to Salt City Lake and performed at the Jewish University, and the headless Mike shocked the local people, but some rumors also spread. Some say that scientists at Jewish universities were stunned by Mike, and then they brutally killed countless chickens, just to create another "Mike." Afterwards, the Rodeos took Mike to California, touring along the southeastern United States. When the crops at Rodeo's farm were ripe, they stopped touring, and they took Mike back to the farm and began harvesting.
This tour made the Rodios famous. Even Time featured a special report on the bizarre story of "Headless Chicken Mike," who won the Guinness Book of World Records as a chicken. And Rodio hired a broker specifically for the chicken. At that time, the Rodios made money by collecting tickets for Mike's performances, earning nearly $5,000 a month, which is equivalent to making more than $80,000 a month today compared to the purchasing power at that time. Countless Americans who wanted to make a fortune followed the example of the Rodios, tried countless times, and killed countless chickens, but none of the chickens survived as tenaciously as Mike, and none even survived for two days. These blind followers also ended up empty-handed.
The Salt Lake Tribune later reported on the rooster, which read: "You will never believe it unless you see it with your own eyes; you will not believe it when you see it with your own eyes." Seeing the rooster's bizarre behavior, Rodeo decided to try to keep the headless rooster alive. Because half of his head was cut off, Mike's esophagus remained outside, so Rodeo fed it through the esophagus, sometimes specifically to catch bugs. He also found an eye drop bottle to feed Mike water.
But this still can't make people wonder, without the brain, how can the rooster's body accept this foreign food and complete the digestion?
All of this requires a unified deployment of the brain to complete.
Wien, an ornithologist at the University of Arkansas, studied the rooster.
He said that Mike did not completely lose his entire head, which was most likely a "mistake" by Rodeo, who cut off Mike's head and part of Mike's brain was preserved. In addition, this chicken also has a difference from other chickens, this chicken has large eye sockets, and most of the brain is squeezed upwards. So the brain of this chicken is at a 45° angle with the level.
After being beheaded by Rodio, the blood clumps together, preventing Mike from dying from excessive blood loss. At the same time, much of Mike's brainstem and cerebellum are preserved.
Of the structural structure of the brain, the brainstem is the most inconspicuous part, but it plays a very important role in regulating biological life activities. In the human brain, the brainstem accounts for only one-fiftieth of the total weight, but in many countries, the clinical standard of death is to see whether the brainstem is dead, because the brainstem controls the most basic functions of organisms, and once the brainstem is damaged, then the organism will die quickly.
Although the cerebellum is smaller, it ensures the normal movement of the mike. The cerebellum has the largest number of neurons in the entire brain region; these neurons maintain normal motor function. Because of the remaining cerebellum, Mike is still able to move normally without a head and adapt to the different environments around him.
But Mike's right ear was unfortunately cut off by Rodeo, which would have a great deal of interference with its balance, but the chicken had a set of other balancing schemes— the lumbosacral organ; this special organ allowed Mike to have a good balance, and the cerebellum maintained daily movements.
In fact, in nature, there are similar events.
If you cut off the head of a snake, then the snake head will still move, and when you bring the object close to it, then the snake head will still produce aggressive behavior, because the snake head has a special structure that can feel the change of heat around it, and the snake head can still complete this function after separating from the snake body.
If you get close to it, it will feel the heat you emit and attack, but don't worry, it's the snake's venom that has lost its activity.
If you're in Korea, you've probably heard of a snack where you cut off the tentacles of a live octopus, dip it in mustard and other seasonings, and sometimes put the octopus's feet in your mouth and still move. Because after the octopus's brain emits signals, the octopus's feet are independent of the movement and do not need to be dominated again.
In addition, turtles also have this phenomenon, because sea turtles live on the seabed for a long time, their hearts do not get the normal supply of oxygen, so the turtle's heart independence is higher, and has a special energy supply system, responding to changes in the outside world, until the turtle's heart will die when oxygen is used up.
For exercise, there is also a special kind of "brainless movement".
Scientists have done experiments to confirm that most vertebrates have a special neural circuit - "central mode generator".
In 1911, a scientist named Thomas experimented with cats by stimulating the spinal cord of cats with some chemicals, which had been stripped out and independent of the brain. Experiments have shown that the cat spinal cord exhibits regular patterns of movement.
With this experiment, the scientists concluded that the "central pattern generator" in the spinal cord can also produce some complex patterns of movement in the case of only a brainstem.
This conclusion was confirmed by Scientists in Germany in 1960. There is no doubt that the "central mode generator" must also be stored in Mike's spinal cord, and through his remaining brainstem in conjunction with the "central mode generator", to complete the daily movement.
After another tour, the Rodios prepare to take Mike home.
It had been 18 months since Mike had lost his head, and the red-hot Mike had an accident in Phoenix, a corn kernel that somehow got stuck into Mike's organ, and then Rodeo suddenly heard a struggling sound from the cage, and Rodeo hurried up to observe Mike's situation and found the corn kernel.
Mike would have had a chance to escape because Rodio would have carried a straw on his body to clean Mike's esophagus, but due to his negligence, he accidentally forgot the life-saving straw at the hotel, and by the time Rodeo found the straw, Mike had left this world after struggling.
The decapitated Mike did not die and lived in good health for 18 months, but died because of a small grain of corn and the negligence of his owner. I don't know if it was 18 months that Rodeo had developed feelings for the chicken, or if his god of wealth had left, and Rodio was very sad.
Although Mike's struggle was very painful, because Mike had lost part of his brain area, the pain nerve was damaged, whether it was the decapitation or the corn, Mike did not feel anything, so it was not so painful during Mike's death.
In 2012, a British scientist heard Mike's story about slaughtering chickens in a slaughterhouse by imitating Rodeo's method, but unfortunately no one intended to adopt this method.
Although Mike died, Rodio did not disclose the news to the public, but instead lied that he had sold Mike to the acrobatic troupe, and when Rodio was about to die, he told the truth that Mike had already died because of his carelessness.
As for where Mack's body went, Rodeo has not said, there are reports that Rodeo took Mike's body to the Jewish University to continue to contribute to the cause of science, but people prefer to believe that Mike's body was randomly discarded by Rodeo on the way home, and may be eaten by wild dogs.
Opinions of the headless chicken varied, with some saying that it was thanks to Olson's care for Mike's life that could be extended, while others said that Rodeo had hurt Mike and used it purely for money, and finally killed Rodio indirectly because of negligence. But in any case, the headless chicken that Rodio "cut" was indeed a miracle.
Regardless of where Mike went after his death, Mike became a kind of "spiritual totem" in Colorado, representing a tenacious spirit of fighting with life. In Rodeo's city, there is even a festival for Mike, "Mac Day of the Headless Chicken". On this day, people spontaneously participate in the running race of "running like a headless chicken". Mike also has a local statue where people celebrate, and an important part of the event is eating chicken – which may seem strange to us.
More than 70 years after the Mack time, there was also a headless chicken in Thailand.
One day in 2018, in a temple in Ratchaburi Province, a monk was cleaning the temple as usual, and when he saw a chicken walking around the temple, he didn't pay much attention at first and continued to clean the temple. But when he saw it again, he was startled, and most of the chicken's head had almost disappeared, but it could still walk normally, and it looked very energetic, flapping its wings from time to time.
So the monk was kind and tried to keep the chicken alive, and he found a syringe and tried to feed the chicken some liquid food. The next day, the chicken was still alive walking around the temple, and the monk posted a photo of the headless chicken on social networks, which received a very violent response, and some veterinary hospitals said they were willing to check and treat the chicken for free.
The doctor at the veterinary hospital said that he had never seen such a chicken, and after some examination, the doctor said that it was a male fighting that was bitten off by other animals and caused serious injuries, but it was not ruled out that it was deliberately cut with a knife.
Although the chicken's head had been lost most of its head, the nose was still there and the mouth was left so that the chicken could breathe and eat, and the doctor at the veterinary hospital said to observe its wound for a few days and then slowly recover. Unfortunately, the chicken only lived for seven days before dying.
Although the natural world is mysterious, there are some things that are really unattainable, and after Mike's death, Rodeo also tried to recreate a Mike, but never succeeded. Mike's presence is an accident We must feel the wonder of life, and at all times we must have a reverential heart for life.