205 Fun Facts About Chicken

The domestic chicken is the domesticated form of which wild bird?

The red junglefowl is the chicken's wild ancestor and is still counted as the same species, so village chickens and wild birds interbreed freely wherever the two meet.

The wild ancestor of the chicken is originally native to which region?

Southeast Asia is still home to the chicken's wild ancestor, a shy forest bird that flies up into the trees to roost at dusk, something its heavy farmyard descendants can barely manage.

What is the pouch where a chicken stores swallowed food before digestion called?

The crop is a pouch at the base of a chicken's neck that holds swallowed food before it moves on to the gizzard, where it is ground up with grit.

As of 2023, about how many chickens were alive in the world?

About 27 billion, more than three for every person on Earth; even so the flock turns over so fast that over 50 billion birds are raised for food each year.

What is the term for a castrated or neutered male chicken?

A capon is a castrated male chicken; caponising makes the bird fatter and its meat more tender, which made capons a delicacy in the Middle Ages.

In which countries is a chicken informally called a "chook"?

Australia and New Zealand share the word, which is thought to echo 'chuck', a dialect call to poultry.

The word "rooster" originated in the 18th century, possibly as what?

A euphemism to avoid "cock" is the usual guess, and the politer word took hold mainly in North America: in Britain the bird is still more likely to be called a cock or cockerel.

A large chicken egg weighs about 2 oz, so a newly hatched chick weighs roughly how much?

About 1.3 oz (37 g) is the hatch weight for modern and heritage breeds alike, yet by day 35 a modern meat bird can weigh nearly twice as much as a heritage one.

Chickens groom their feathers with oil from a gland found where on the body?

At the base of the tail sits the preen gland: the bird rubs its beak on it, then draws the oil through its feathers to keep them supple and in good condition.

Which everyday phrase comes from a 1920s study of how hens dominate one another?

Pecking order translates the German Hackordnung, the word Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe used after finding that each hen in a flock knows which birds she may peck and which may peck her.

A fertile chicken egg takes about how long to hatch?

A fertile chicken egg hatches after about 21 days of incubation; the hen usually stays on the nest for around two more days after the first chick emerges.

What does a chick use to break out of its shell?

An egg tooth is a hard little point on the tip of the beak: the chick forces it through the shell again and again as it turns, cutting away the blunt end, and the tooth later falls off or is absorbed.

The earliest probable domestic chicken bones were found at Ban Non Wat, a Stone Age village site in which country?

Thailand's Ban Non Wat holds chicken bones roughly 3,500 years old; researchers think newly planted rice drew wild birds out of the forest to feed and nest near people, and taming followed.

Which seafaring traders are credited with spreading chickens along the Mediterranean coast as far as Spain?

Phoenicians carried the birds west, so Iberia's oldest chicken bones turn up at their trading colonies; Europe's first pictures of chickens are on Corinthian pottery of the 7th century BC.

In genome research, the chicken holds what distinction?

First bird species sequenced, in 2004: birds and mammals went separate ways about 310 million years ago, so the 60 percent of chicken genes that still have a human counterpart point to DNA worth keeping.

In 2006, researchers found that chicken embryos carrying a mutation called talpid2 had started growing what?

Teeth: the cone-shaped, alligator-like buds, spotted when a mutant embryo's beak fell off, showed that birds still carry the genetic recipe for a feature they lost at least 70 million years ago.

A hen from a top commercial egg breed produces about how many eggs in a year?

About 300, close to one a day: farms light their sheds to mimic long summer days, because on natural daylight a hen would produce eggs mainly in the warmer months.

The UK alone consumes more than how many eggs every day?

UK consumption runs to more than 34 million eggs a day, roughly 13 billion a year; world chicken-egg production topped 80 million tonnes in 2017, over a third of it Chinese.

Before battle, Roman commanders consulted sacred chickens, and the omen was bad if the birds refused to do what?

Eat: when the sacred chickens would not feed before a sea battle off Sicily, the consul Claudius Pulcher is said to have thrown them overboard, saying they could drink instead, and he went on to lose the fight.

In the nursery rhyme 'Cock a Doodle Doo', what has 'my dame' lost?

Her shoe: the master has lost his fiddle-stick too, and a later verse has her dance without it. The rhyme first appeared in full in Mother Goose's Melody, printed around 1765.

The answer 'To get to the other side' makes 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' a classic example of what?

Anti-humor works by letting you down: the setup promises a clever punchline and delivers a plain fact. The riddle was in print by 1847, and minstrel shows carried it across America.

Cockfighting appears to have been practised as early as 2500–2100 BC in which civilisation?

The Indus Valley civilisation of 2500–2100 BC offers the earliest apparent evidence of cockfighting; chickens were seemingly kept for fighting and ritual before they were raised mainly for food.

Magellan's chronicler Antonio Pigafetta described cockfighting in 1521 on Palawan, part of which island group?

The Philippines had the sport before Europeans arrived: Pigafetta saw islanders set their cocks to fight and bet on the winner, a pastime Filipinos now call sabong.

Chicken Run (2000) was the first feature-length film from which animation studio?

Aardman, the Bristol studio behind Wallace and Gromit, built its first feature on prison-break films such as The Great Escape, swapping the prisoner-of-war camp for an egg farm.

Who voiced Rocky, the American circus rooster in Chicken Run?

Mel Gibson gave Rocky his swagger in 2000, but the studio did not ask him back for the 2023 sequel, in which Zachary Levi took over the part.

What is the subtitle of the 2023 Chicken Run sequel released on Netflix?

Dawn of the Nugget turns the first film inside out: instead of breaking out of a farm, the flock breaks into Mrs Tweedy's high-tech poultry plant to rescue Ginger and Rocky's daughter.

Who was the original voice of Foghorn Leghorn?

Mel Blanc voiced the rooster from his 1946 debut in Walky Talky Hawky, nominally a Henery Hawk cartoon; it earned an Oscar nomination, and Foghorn went on to star in 28 more shorts.

Foghorn Leghorn borrowed catchphrases such as 'That's a joke, son!' from Senator Claghorn, a character from what?

A 1940s radio show: Kenny Delmar played the blustery Southern senator on Fred Allen's programme from 1945, basing him on a Texas rancher, and within a year Warner Bros. had a rooster who talked the same way.

Foghorn Leghorn's perennial prank war is with which character?

Barnyard Dawg, a feisty basset hound, is normally the straight man for the rooster's pranks, but in 1962's Mother Was a Rooster the dog starts it, stealing an ostrich egg because the farm has been dull.

The Leghorn breed takes its name from the traditional English name of which Italian port?

Leghorn is the old English name for Livorno, the Tuscan port from which the birds were shipped to North America around 1828, when they were simply called 'Italians'.

Which state's official bird is the Blue Hen Chicken?

Delaware made the Blue Hen its state bird in 1939; the name is said to go back to Revolutionary War soldiers who carried fierce blue gamecocks and fought so hard that they were called the Blue Hen's Chickens.

Which Chinese breed has black skin, black bones and five toes on each foot?

The Silkie's fur-like plumage, black skin and bones and five-toed feet make it unmistakable; early Dutch breeders told buyers the birds were the offspring of chickens and rabbits.

The Ayam Cemani, a chicken black down to its beak and organs, comes from which country?

Indonesia's Ayam Cemani is black inside and out because of fibromelanosis, a genetic condition that floods its tissues with pigment; the birds have long been kept there for ritual and mystical purposes.

Brillat-Savarin supposedly called which protected-origin bird "the queen of poultry, the poultry of kings"?

Poulet de Bresse has been protected by French law since 1936: the birds range over grassland for months, then spend their last weeks in a darkened shed being fattened on maize and milk.

Which statement about Cornish game hens is true?

They can be male or female: despite the name, a Cornish game hen is neither wild game nor always a hen, just a young meat chicken sold at no more than two pounds.

A typical supermarket meat chicken is slaughtered at about what age?

About 6 weeks is the modern norm; US industry records show that the average meat bird of 1925 took 112 days to reach market, and weighed far less when it got there.

The chicken nugget was invented, and given away unpatented, by a food scientist at which Ivy League university?

Cornell's Robert C. Baker worked out how to make ground chicken hold together and keep its batter through freezing and frying, then published the method for anyone to use.

USDA generally lets American chicken be sold as 'free range' if the birds had what?

Access to the outdoors for part of the day is enough, whether or not a bird ever steps outside; there is no precise federal definition, and most chickens stay in near their feed and water.

Buffalo wings are usually credited to Teressa Bellissimo, who ran which restaurant in Buffalo in 1964?

Teressa Bellissimo of the Anchor Bar is usually credited with the 1964 invention; at the time wings were cheap cuts, usually thrown away or kept for stock.

In 2001, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook described which dish as "a true British national dish"?

Chicken tikka masala earned the title, Cook said, because Britain had adapted an Indian dish to its own taste: the masala sauce was added to satisfy the British desire for meat served in gravy.

What does cacciatore, as in chicken cacciatore, mean in Italian?

Hunter is the meaning: 'alla cacciatora' is food cooked in the manner of hunters, a rustic braise with onions, herbs and tomatoes that Italians make with rabbit as readily as with chicken.

What does the French dish name "coq au vin" literally mean?

Rooster with wine is the literal sense: long, slow braising was the way to make a tough old bird tender, though today the dish is most often made with an ordinary chicken.

Chicken Kiev, also called chicken Kyiv, is a pounded fillet rolled around what before being breaded and fried?

Cold butter melts as the fillet cooks, so the first cut can send it spurting out; Soviet-era tourist booklets warned diners of the danger to their clothes.

Nashville hot chicken is traditionally served on slices of white bread topped with what?

Pickle chips and white bread come with every order; the dish is said to have begun as revenge, when Thornton Prince's girlfriend drowned his fried chicken in fiery spice and he liked it enough to open a restaurant.

Chick-fil-A's trademarked slogan reads 'We didn't invent the chicken, just the' what?

Chicken sandwich, says the slogan, though earlier ones are on record; Truett Cathy's real find, in 1961, was a pressure fryer that cooked one as fast as a hamburger, at a diner so small he named it the Dwarf Grill.

Despite the name, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in 1952 in which state?

Utah: Salt Lake City restaurateur Pete Harman struck the first franchise deal with Harland Sanders, then gave the brand its bucket and pushed the 'finger-lickin' good' motto.

Ethologists call the trance a "hypnotised" chicken enters by what name?

Tonic immobility is a last-ditch defence found from insects to sharks: an animal seized by a predator goes limp as if dead, stays aware, and bolts the moment the grip loosens.

The Chicken Dance tune was written in 1957 by a Swiss musician who played which instrument?

Accordion: Werner Thomas played his tune in mountain pubs for years before a Belgian producer heard it in Davos and turned it into a record that travelled the world.

The Chicken Dance was originally titled "Der Ententanz", a title that names which birds?

It only became a worldwide hit between 1980 and 1982, more than two decades after it was written.

In the best-known version of Chicken Little, what falls on the chick's head?

An acorn lands on the chick's head in the best-known telling; in an 1840 American version a leaf falls on her tail instead, and in an 1842 Scottish one the culprit is a pea.

In Plutarch, where is it debated whether hen or egg came first?

Dinner party: in Plutarch's Table Talk the puzzle comes up over a meal, and one guest objects that so small a question shakes loose a great and weighty one, whether the world itself had a beginning.

The game of 'chicken' is used to model which Cold War standoff?

The Cuban Missile Crisis fits the model: each side pressed on toward disaster hoping the other would swerve first, a kind of standoff Bertrand Russell had likened to a reckless car game.

The phrase "rubber chicken" is used disparagingly to describe what?

'Rubber chicken' mocks the food at big banquets and fundraising dinners: pre-cooked chicken held at serving temperature for hours turns tough, hence the 'rubber chicken circuit'.

The rooster became a symbol of France because of a pun in which language?

In Latin gallus meant both a rooster and an inhabitant of Gaul; France's enemies used the joke first, before the French adopted the bird themselves.

Rooster weathervanes on steeples recall which apostle's denial 'before the rooster crows'?

The cock recalls Peter's threefold denial of Jesus before the rooster crowed; a 9th-century papal decree, traditionally credited to Nicholas I, is said to have put the bird on church steeples.

In which Shakespeare play does a nobleman mourn his murdered family as 'all my pretty chickens and their dam'?

Macbeth: 'chicken' once meant a chick, so Macduff is picturing his children as a brood and his wife as their mother; the same speech gave English the phrase 'at one fell swoop'.

The Galo de Barcelos, a brightly painted rooster figure, is a common symbol of which country?

The Galo de Barcelos is an unofficial emblem of Portugal; legend says a roasted rooster crowed to prove a condemned pilgrim's innocence in the town of Barcelos.

In Europe, chicken consumption overtook beef in 1996, a shift linked to consumer awareness of what?

Mad cow disease: in March 1996 the British government announced that it had most likely spread from cattle to people, and shoppers across Europe turned from beef to chicken.

In the United States of the 1800s, chicken was what?

In 1800s America chicken was pricier than other meats, a dish 'sought by the rich'; most families ate one only on a Sunday or a holiday, until wartime shortages of beef and pork made it everyday food.

On a chicken, the prized pieces of dark meat called "oysters" are found where?

On the back, by the thigh, sit two small rounds of dark meat; the French call them sot-l'y-laisse, roughly 'the fool leaves it there', because careless carvers miss them.

Soul-food chicken and waffles took off after the Wells Supper Club opened in which neighborhood?

Harlem's Wells Supper Club, opened in 1938, made fried chicken and waffles a soul-food staple; the pairing itself is far older, first served in Pennsylvania Dutch country with stewed chicken and gravy.

A hen's eggshell colour can generally be predicted from the colour of which body part?

Her earlobes are the tell: white-earlobed breeds such as Leghorns lay white eggs and red-earlobed breeds lay brown ones; the nutrition is the same.

The egg carton was invented in 1911 in which country?

Canada: Joseph Coyle, a newspaper editor in Smithers, British Columbia, designed the carton in 1911 to end a feud between a farmer and a hotel owner over eggs that kept arriving broken.

Feed salesman Jesse Jewell is credited with making Gainesville the 'poultry capital of the world' in which state?

Georgia: in the Depression Jewell gave cash-poor farmers chicks and feed on credit, then bought the grown birds back at a price that guaranteed them a profit, and built a hatchery and a plant around the trade.

Which mineral makes up about 95 per cent of a chicken's eggshell?

An eggshell is roughly 95 per cent calcium carbonate, the mineral of chalk and limestone; a web of protein holds the crystals together, and without it the shell would be too brittle to keep its shape.

What is the yearly shedding and regrowth of a chicken's feathers called?

Moulting swaps worn feathers for new ones, and hens come back laying better afterwards, which is why some egg farms force a moult by withholding feed for a week or two.

Which part of a chicken is known as the parson's nose?

The fleshy tail stub covers the fused bones that hold the tail feathers, which is why it juts out on a roast bird; it also goes by pope's, bishop's and even sultan's nose.

Why is 'no hormones added' true of every brand of American chicken?

Hormones are banned in US poultry by federal rules, so no brand may use them; a package that boasts of it must also state that no hormones are used in any poultry.

What is the term for chickens kept for egg production?

Hens kept for egg production are called layers; a commercial layer produces around 300 eggs a year, while broilers are the birds raised for meat.

Battery cages, the stacked housing used on egg farms, take their name from what?

Rows of cages like an artillery battery gave the system its name: identical cages joined in ranks, as guns are in a battery. The EU banned the conventional kind from 2012.

Chicken piccata is finished with butter, lemon and which brined ingredient?

Capers are the preserved flower buds of a spiny Mediterranean shrub; their sharp, salty bite cuts through the butter and lemon of a piccata sauce.

Coronation chicken, created for a lunch at Elizabeth II's coronation, dresses cold chicken in a creamy sauce flavoured with what?

Curry gives the sauce its mild warmth; florist Constance Spry and cook Rosemary Hume devised the dish for a lunch for foreign guests in 1953, served by students from their cookery school.

Chicken parmigiana is thought to be an American twist on an older Italian dish made with which vegetable?

Eggplant parmigiana, fried slices baked with tomato and cheese, came first; Italian immigrants in the north-eastern United States swapped in breaded chicken, so chicken parm was born in America, not in Parma.

Butter chicken is credited to Moti Mahal, a restaurant in which Indian city?

Delhi: Moti Mahal's founders, refugees from Peshawar after Partition, are said to have made the first butter chicken by chance, simmering leftover tandoori chicken in a tomato gravy rich with butter.

Which wine is typically used in coq au vin?

Red Burgundy is the classic choice, though the Jura makes the dish with vin jaune and Alsace with riesling. Legends trace it to Caesar's Gaul, yet no recipe was written down until the 20th century.

Chicken Marengo is named after an 1800 battle in Italy won by which commander?

Napoleon Bonaparte's cook supposedly improvised the dish from what he could forage after the victory, but food historians call that a myth: there were no tomatoes to be had, and the first printed recipe omits them.

Tandoori chicken takes its name from the tandoor, which is what?

A clay oven shaped like a large vase, with a charcoal or wood fire inside, gives the dish its name; naan is baked in the same oven, its dough pressed flat against the hot inner wall.

What does the French term cordon bleu translate to?

Cordon bleu means 'blue ribbon', the sash worn by knights of the Order of the Holy Spirit, founded in 1578; it became a byword for excellence in cooking.

What is the traditional meat in a cordon bleu, before chicken became the popular version?

Veal is the classic: pounded thin, wrapped around ham and cheese, then breaded and fried. Despite its French name, the dish is most often traced to Switzerland: rival tales each credit a cook from the Valais.

What is the meaty upper section of a chicken wing, the part nearest the body, called?

Drumette is the name, a play on drumstick; a whole wing is cut into drumette, flat and tip, and the tip, also called the flapper, is usually thrown away rather than served.

Buffalo wings are traditionally coated in melted butter and what?

Vinegar-based cayenne hot sauce and melted butter coat wings that are fried bare, with no breading; the name honours the city of Buffalo, where they were first served, not the animal.

Which Japanese fried chicken has a name often written as 'Chinese frying'?

Karaage is often written with the character for Tang China, but the same sound can be written 'empty', so the name is also read as 'dry frying', without batter; which reading came first is disputed.

The Japanese word katsu is a shortened form of the transliteration of which English word?

Cutlet became katsuretsu when Tokyo restaurants serving Western food took up a French breaded-meat dish in the late 1800s; Rengatei in Ginza made the first pork version in 1899, and the word was soon clipped to katsu.

Chicken Chettinad comes from a region of which Indian state?

Tamil Nadu's Chettinad is the dry home country of the Chettiars, merchants who traded around the Indian Ocean; their cooking relies on sun-dried meats and salted vegetables that suit the climate.

The spicy deep-fried dish Chicken 65 originated at Hotel Buhari in which Indian city?

Chennai's Buhari Hotel, in what was then Madras, is credited with the dish; its fame spawned vegetarian spin-offs such as Paneer 65 and Gobi 65, made with cheese or cauliflower instead.

Hainanese chicken rice was adapted from the dishes of which Hainan town?

Hainanese chicken rice descends from Wenchang chicken, a poached-bird dish from the Hainan town of Wenchang; Hainanese immigrants made it one of Singapore's national dishes.

Jamaican jerk chicken is traditionally smoked over the wood of the tree that gives which seasoning?

Allspice, called pimento in Jamaica, flavours jerk twice: its berries go into the marinade with Scotch bonnet chillies and its wood smokes the meat, a way of cooking handed down by the island's Maroons.

Peri-peri, as in peri-peri chicken, is pilipili in Swahili, where the word means what?

Pepper is the meaning; the chilli is no African native but descends from an American one that Portuguese explorers raised in their southern African colonies, where it took the local name.

What does the Japanese word yakitori literally mean?

Grilled bird is the literal sense, from yaki, 'grilled', and tori, 'bird'; the skewers cook over charcoal because it burns very hot with almost no water vapour, which crisps the skin.

Satay is most commonly served with a sauce based on what?

Peanuts make the classic sauce, yet the plant is no Asian native: it comes from South America and reached Indonesia with Spanish merchants in the late 16th century.

Chicken-fried steak is thought to descend from which dish German immigrants brought to Texas?

Wiener schnitzel is the likely ancestor, remade with local beef; a rival Texas legend says a short-order cook in Lamesa invented the dish in 1911 by reading two separate orders as one.

'Weird Al' Yankovic's unreleased 'Chicken Pot Pie' parodied which song?

The parody of 'Live and Let Die' was never released because Paul McCartney, a vegetarian, would not approve a song about eating chicken.

What fruit was traditionally added to Scotland's cock-a-leekie soup?

Prunes are simmered in the pot for their sweetness, which sets off the savoury leek-and-chicken broth.

Which Italian breed was crossed with Malay birds to develop the Rhode Island Red?

Brown Leghorns were crossed with Oriental birds such as the Malay in late-19th-century Rhode Island and Massachusetts to produce the Rhode Island Red, the state bird since 1954.

Which breed was America's most widely kept chicken until World War II?

Plymouth Rock birds were first shown in Boston in 1849, then vanished for twenty years until a new strain appeared at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1869 and went on to fill America's farmyards.

Britain's first poultry show was held in 1845 at which attraction in the capital?

London Zoo hosted it in 1845, with old farmyard breeds such as the Sussex and the Dorking on show; within a decade giant birds imported from China had turned poultry-keeping into a craze.

The Brahma and Cochin breeds derive from large birds imported in the 1840s from which Chinese port?

Shanghai gave the giant feather-legged birds their first Western name, 'Shanghai fowl'; American breeders turned them into the Brahma, the country's leading meat chicken from the 1850s until about 1930.

The Polish chicken is distinguished by what feature?

A crest of feathers on its head, growing from a bony knob on the skull, can flop over a Polish chicken's eyes and block its view, so the birds startle easily and keepers often tie the plumes up.

The Araucana, one of very few breeds to lay blue eggs, comes from which country?

Chile's Araucana owes its blue shells to an ancient, harmless retrovirus that slipped into the birds' DNA a few centuries ago and switched on a gene in the shell gland.

The Marans lays eggs of what unusual colour?

Very dark brown, from mahogany to chocolate, is the Marans trademark; the breed crossed the Channel around 1929 as fertile eggs, which Lord Greenway brought to England and had hatched.

The Serama, the world's smallest chicken breed, originated in which country?

Malaysia's Serama took shape in Kelantan from the early 1970s through crosses of Japanese and local bantams; its breeder is said to have named it after Rama, the title of the kings of neighbouring Thailand.

The Jersey Giant was created with the intention of replacing which bird as a meat source?

The turkey was the target, and the bird did become one of the heaviest of all chicken breeds; its first name, 'Black Giant', honoured its breeders, the brothers John and Thomas Black, not the colour of its feathers.

The Sebright is named after Sir John Saunders Sebright, who created it as what?

An ornamental breed was all Sir John Sebright wanted from his tiny laced bantam; Charles Darwin later quoted this 'most skilful breeder' in On the Origin of Species on how quickly selection can reshape a bird.

The word bantam derives from a seaport city on which Indonesian island?

Java's port of Bantam, now Banten, was a stop where European ships restocked and took on small local chickens; the name spread to all miniature fowl, and then to any small but spirited person.

In 2007, protein from a 68-million-year-old fossil of which dinosaur was reported to match the chicken's most closely?

Tyrannosaurus rex collagen from a leg bone matched chicken protein best of the animals compared and was hailed as the first molecular evidence that birds are the dinosaurs' closest living kin, though later studies questioned the sample.

What is broodiness in a hen?

Sitting on eggs to incubate them is broodiness, and a broody hen stops laying and often cuts back on feeding and drinking.

What is the function of the chalazae, the spiral bands inside a bird's egg?

Their job is to hold the yolk in place, tying it to the membrane at each end of the shell; bakers sometimes strain the ropy strands out so that a mixture sets with an even texture.

Where in an egg is the air cell that makes stale ones float?

The broad end is where the air cell sits: it forms as a new-laid egg cools and keeps growing as moisture escapes through the shell's pores; in time it makes the egg buoyant, the basis of the kitchen float test.

In the classic trick for 'hypnotising' a chicken, what is drawn on the ground in front of its beak?

A straight line, chalked outward from the beak while the bird's head is held low, can keep it staring for up to half an hour; the trick was already in print in 1646, in a book by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher.

Which highly contagious viral disease of chickens was historically called fowl plague?

Avian influenza was first described in 1878 as fowl plague; in 1955 its virus was shown to be a close relative of the one that gives people flu.

Marek's disease of chickens was the first cancer to be prevented by what?

A vaccine has protected chicks from Marek's tumours since 1970, but it is 'leaky': it stops the disease without stopping the virus spreading, which has let strains too deadly to survive otherwise keep circulating.

In Rebel Without a Cause, the 'chickie run' has drivers racing stolen cars toward what?

In Rebel Without a Cause (1955) James Dean's Jim and rival Buzz race stolen cars toward a cliff edge, the first to bail out being 'chicken'; Buzz's sleeve catches and he dies.

In the best-known version of Chicken Little, whom do the animals set out to tell that the sky is falling?

The king never hears the news in the familiar ending: a fox joins the march and leads the birds to his den instead, and 'Chicken Little' became a byword for anyone who cries disaster.

In the fable of the Little Red Hen, what does she finally make from the wheat that nobody would help her grow?

Bread is the prize: the hen plants, harvests and mills the wheat alone, and when the idle animals at last volunteer, to help eat the loaf, she refuses and eats it without them.

Which of Chaucer's Canterbury stories is a beast fable about the rooster Chauntecleer?

The Nun's Priest's Tale, a mock epic of the 1390s, opens with Chauntecleer waking from a nightmare of his own death, which his favourite hen briskly puts down to indigestion.

In Chaucer's tale, the rooster Chauntecleer escapes the fox by tricking it into doing what?

Speaking freed him: snatched after the fox flattered him into crowing with his eyes shut, Chauntecleer urged his captor to shout a taunt at the pursuers, and flew into a tree the moment the jaws opened.

Disney's 2005 Chicken Little was the studio's first what?

A fully computer-animated feature was Disney's answer to rivals' hits after its hand-drawn Treasure Planet and Home on the Range disappointed; 2000's Dinosaur had still set its digital creatures against filmed backgrounds.

In Disney's 2005 Chicken Little, the falling 'piece of sky' turns out to be what?

An alien spaceship panel, part of the craft's camouflage, is what hits him; the 'invasion' that follows is a misunderstanding, since the aliens are only two parents searching for their lost child.

Robot Chicken was created by Matthew Senreich and which actor?

Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, then working at a magazine, first made stop-motion shorts with toys for a Sony website around 2001; Adult Swim picked up Robot Chicken on the strength of them.

The Gallic rooster represents the French people, while which figure represents the French state?

Marianne, the woman in the Phrygian cap, appears on French stamps and coins, and since 1969 her town-hall busts have been modelled on stars such as Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve.

A gilded rooster tops the garden gate of which Paris palace?

The Élysée Palace got its rooster gate, the Grille du Coq, under the Third Republic, which put the bird on its seal and gold coins after Napoleon III had scorned it; the gate opens onto the palace park.

A 'chicken gun' fires bird carcasses at high speed to safety-test what?

Aircraft windshields and jet engines are the usual targets; chickens are used because they are cheap and easy to get, and the rules say the birds must not be frozen, which would make the test unrealistic.

Frank Perdue added the petals of which flower to his chickens' feed to turn their skin a deeper yellow?

Marigold blossoms pass their yellow pigment on to the bird that eats them, the same trick farmers use to deepen the colour of egg yolks, and it gave Perdue's chickens their trademark hue.

Tyson Foods, which began in 1935 with founder John Tyson trucking chickens to city markets, is based in which state?

Arkansas's John Tyson heard that chickens fetched more in northern cities, so he borrowed money and hauled a load to Chicago in 1936; the $235 profit paid for the next trip, and the business grew from there.

Which French word do British butchers use for a very young chicken, small enough to serve one per person?

Poussin is simply French for a chick; in Britain it means a bird killed at only a few weeks old, while American menus use the same word for the larger Cornish game hen.

The Cornish chicken, first known as the Indian Game, originated around 1820 in Cornwall and which other south-west English county?

Devon shared the breed with Cornwall, where Sir Walter Gilbert created it around 1820; American breeders dropped the name Indian Game in 1910 and called it Cornish, after the place it really came from.

The 'chicken tax' of 1964, a US reply to European tariffs on American poultry, put a 25% duty on which imports?

Light trucks are the only target left decades later, and carmakers have found dodges: Subaru fixed plastic seats in the bed of its BRAT pickup so that it could enter as a passenger car at a tenth of the rate.

On the code stamped on every EU egg, a first digit of 0 means the hens were kept how?

Organic eggs carry a 0, with 1 for free-range, 2 for barn and 3 for cage; the stamp has been compulsory since 2004 so that shoppers can tell at the shelf how the hen behind each egg lived.

Salmonella is named not after the fish but after Daniel Salmon, who worked in which profession?

Veterinarian Daniel Elmer Salmon ran the US government division where his assistant Theobald Smith actually found the bacterium in 1885; the genus was named for the boss fifteen years later.

Which element paired with the Rooster in the Chinese year that began in 2017?

2017 was the year of the Fire Rooster (ding-you); the ten Heavenly Stems cycle through the five elements, so the next Fire Rooster year falls in 2077.

The word 'vane', as in the cockerel-topped weather vane, comes from an Old English word meaning what?

Flag is what the Old English fana meant; the oldest surviving rooster vane, made in the ninth century, turned on a church tower in Brescia, Italy, for more than a thousand years before it was moved to a museum.

Chicken soup, the traditional remedy for a cold, is jokingly known as 'Jewish' what?

Penicillin it is not, but a 2000 laboratory study at the University of Nebraska found that chicken soup slowed the white blood cells behind cold symptoms; later reviews called the evidence inconclusive.

Kung Pao chicken is believed to be named after Ding Baozhen, a Qing governor of which province?

Sichuan was Ding Baozhen's post from 1876 until his death in 1886; 'Kung Pao' renders Gongbao, 'palace guardian', a court title he held, so the dish is named for his rank rather than for him.

Chef Peng Chang-kuei brought his General Tso's chicken to America in 1973 by opening a restaurant where?

New York City got Uncle Peng's Hunan Yuan on East 44th Street in 1973; Peng said he had first cooked the dish in Taiwan in the 1950s, and when he later served it in Hunan itself, locals found it too sweet.

Biryani is thought to derive from a rice dish from which cuisine?

Persian is the root: the name comes from a Persian word for roasted or fried, and cooks at India's Mughal court are thought to have married Persian slow-cooked rice with spicier local styles.

In South Korea, the word chimaek describes fried chicken paired with which drink?

Beer in Korean is maekju, and chimaek fuses it with 'chicken'; the pairing boomed during the 2002 World Cup, when crowds watching the matches on big outdoor screens ate and drank the two together.

Pollo a la brasa, a charcoal rotisserie chicken, is one of the most eaten dishes in which country?

Peru owes it to two immigrants from Europe: Roger Schuler began spit-roasting chickens over charcoal at his restaurant outside the capital, and a metalworker friend built a furnace with rotating bars to keep up with demand.

Chicken Maryland is traditionally garnished with what?

Bananas, usually fried, are the classic garnish for chicken Maryland, a habit put down to Baltimore's past as one of the leading ports for the fruit.

Which fast-food chain developed popcorn chicken in 1991?

KFC introduced popcorn chicken in the early 1990s, developed for the chain by food inventor Gene Gagliardi, who also created Steak-umm.

Chicken tenders are a strip of muscle that lies beneath which larger cut of the bird?

Breast meat sits on top of the tender, a separate strip on each side of the breastbone; a New Hampshire restaurant, the Puritan Backroom, claims to have been the first to fry them as a dish, in 1974.

What does the Chinese name dànhuātāng, for the dish of wispy beaten eggs in broth, literally mean?

Dànhuātāng is literally 'egg flower soup' (dàn egg, huā flower, tāng soup); a thin stream of beaten egg poured into boiling broth forms the wisps, hence the English name egg drop soup.

A Scotch egg is a boiled egg wrapped in what before being breaded and fried?

Sausage meat is the wrapper, but the crumb coat came later: the first printed recipe, in an 1809 edition of Maria Rundell's cookery book, had none, and Mrs Beeton was still calling it optional in 1861.

Which London store claims to have invented the Scotch egg in 1738?

Fortnum & Mason says it invented the Scotch egg in 1738, but rival stories credit an eatery in Whitby, Yorkshire, or trace the idea to an Indian dish, nargisi kofta.

Century eggs are preserved in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, rice hulls and what?

Century eggs are coated in a paste of quicklime, clay, ash, salt and rice hulls; the alkaline cure, lasting weeks to months, turns the white to dark jelly and the yolk grey-green.

Why do double-yolk eggs occur?

A hen releases two yolks close together when her cycle runs fast, most often a young bird whose rhythm has not yet settled, and the pair end up wrapped in a single shell.

The Buckeye, the only American chicken breed known to have been created by a woman, is named for which state?

Ohio's Nettie Metcalf first sold her birds as 'Pea Combed Rhode Island Reds', found that the borrowed name was holding them back, and renamed them after the Buckeye State and its glossy brown nut.

The Orpington breed was created in the 1880s in a town then in which English county?

Kent coachman William Cook unveiled his black Orpington in 1886; shipped to Australia within a few years, his birds were bred there for eggs and became a new breed, the Australorp.

Which breed, nicknamed the Pilgrim Fowl, is considered America's oldest chicken breed?

The Dominique, a barred bird already well known by the mid-1700s, lost ground to newer breeds and had almost died out by 1970, when only a handful of flocks were left, before enthusiasts revived it.

On The Muppet Show, Camilla the Chicken is the long-time girlfriend of which character?

Gonzo, whose own species is a running joke, guards the romance jealously: in A Muppet Family Christmas a feathered rival flirts with Camilla and earns his fury.

What kind of title was the 'Colonel' in Colonel Sanders?

A state honor: Kentucky's governor made Sanders an honorary Kentucky Colonel in 1935, one of thousands he handed out, and Sanders only began dressing the part after a second commission in 1950.

Popeyes founder Al Copeland said the chain was named after a character from which 1971 film?

Copeland said Popeyes took its name from Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle, the detective Gene Hackman played in The French Connection, not from the spinach-eating sailor; the chain launched in New Orleans in 1972.

The peri-peri chicken chain Nando's was founded in 1987 in which city?

Johannesburg is where Fernando Duarte and Robert Brozin tried the peri-peri chicken at a Portuguese-Mozambican takeaway called Chickenland in 1987, liked it enough to buy the place, and renamed it.

Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers is named after what?

The founder's yellow Labrador, Raising Cane, gave the first restaurant its name in 1996, and the line has continued: later Labradors of the same name have served as company mascots and therapy dogs.

Bojangles', the chicken-and-biscuits chain, was founded in 1977 in which city?

Charlotte, North Carolina, got the first Bojangles in 1977; the chain made its name in 1989, when its restaurants stayed open as Hurricane Hugo struck.

Which breed of dairy cow stars in Chick-fil-A's 'Eat Mor Chikin' ads, created in 1995?

The black-and-white Holsteins paint misspelt signs begging people to eat chicken, since the alternative is them; created by The Richards Group in 1995, they later entered advertising's Madison Avenue Walk of Fame.

Which of these is one of the four official shapes of a McDonald's Chicken McNugget?

The boot joins the bell, the ball and the bone, or bow-tie, in a set of four that McDonald's says keeps cooking times consistent.

Carter Wilkerson's 2017 plea for a year of free nuggets from which chain broke Twitter's retweet record?

Wendy's told the Nevada teenager he needed 18 million retweets; he fell far short, but passed Ellen DeGeneres's Oscars selfie and got his nuggets anyway.

Which K-pop group's 2021 McDonald's meal paired Chicken McNuggets with Sweet Chili and Cajun dipping sauces?

BTS put its name on a nugget meal that reached fifty countries, with two sauces inspired by McDonald's South Korean recipes.

A McNugget sparked a record eBay bidding war in 2021 because it resembled a Crewmate from which game?

Among Us was the game: bidding ran far past what the seller expected, and Guinness later named it the most expensive chicken nugget sold at online auction.

Which 1998 Disney film was promoted by a limited-run McNugget sauce later name-checked in Rick and Morty?

Mulan was the film the limited-run sauce was made for; almost twenty years later a Rick and Morty episode had Rick profess his passion for it.

Which country in 2020 became the first to approve lab-grown meat, sold as Eat Just's cultured chicken nuggets?

Singapore cleared the nuggets in December 2020, and a restaurant there called 1880 soon made the first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat.

René Arend, the McDonald's chef behind the Chicken McNugget, also developed which sandwich introduced in 1981?

The McRib, a minced pork patty in barbecue sauce, came from the same Luxembourg-born chef and was first tested around Kansas City.

Before chicken, McDonald's chef René Arend was asked by Ray Kroc to develop bite-sized nuggets of what?

Onion nuggets, a bite-sized take on the fried ring, came first; Arend switched to chicken in 1979 at Fred Turner's suggestion.

Despite its Asian-sounding name, the huge Brahma chicken was actually developed in which country?

The United States is where breeders shaped the Brahma from big imported birds, and it was the country's main meat breed from the 1850s until about 1930.

The five-toed Dorking chicken is traditionally said to descend from birds brought to Britain by which invaders?

The Romans get the credit because their writer Columella praised five-toed fowl as the best breeding stock, though nobody knows if they brought any.

Which US state gives its name to a chicken breed developed purely from Rhode Island Red stock?

New Hampshire breeders selected their reds for rapid growth and fast feathering, and ended up with a lighter-coloured bird without adding any other breed.

Japan's historic Onagadori chicken, kept on high perches by its breeders, is famous for which feature?

A very long tail is the breed's hallmark: its 16 to 18 tail feathers can keep growing for years, so keepers perch the birds high to keep them clean.

The Naked Neck chicken, also nicknamed the Turken, is often named after which region of Romania?

Transylvania is where its breeding was documented by the late nineteenth century; the Turken nickname came from a mistaken belief that it was a cross with another farmyard bird.

In 1852 the breeder George Burnham sent nine Brahma chickens as a gift to which monarch?

Queen Victoria received the nine birds in December 1852, the first of the breed ever exported to her kingdom.

Which glossy black chicken breed made headlines when one hen laid 364 eggs in 365 days?

Australorp hens were bred from imported Black Orpingtons purely for laying, and a team of six had already averaged over 300 eggs each in a 1922–23 trial.

Despite its German-sounding name, the Hamburg chicken is classed as a breed from which country?

The Netherlands is its home: the gold- and silver-pencilled varieties appear to be of Dutch origin and resemble an old Dutch fowl, the Assendelfter.

The Wyandotte chicken, an American breed developed in the 1870s, takes its name from what?

An Indigenous people, the Wyandot of North America, lent their name to a bird that four breeders created together.

Which fleshy crest on a chicken's head comes in single, pea, rose and strawberry types?

The comb may be a reliable indicator of a bird's health and vigour, and some poultry use it to size up a potential mate.

Which hanging flaps of skin beneath a chicken's beak are larger and more prominent in males?

Wattles usually hang as a pair; when an animal has just one flap in the middle, the same structure is sometimes known as a dewlap.

Which bony, horn-sheathed outgrowth on the back of a rooster's leg gets bigger as the bird ages?

A spur grows from the base outwards like a true horn, so the sharp tip is always the oldest part of it.

The hock joint, where a chicken's thigh meets its shank, is the equivalent of which human joint?

The ankle is the human match for the hock; below it runs the scaly shank, which in some breeds is feathered right down to the toes.

On a rooster, the hackle and cape feathers end in what shape, unlike those of a hen?

Pointed ends mark a male's hackle and cape feathers, while a female's are rounded; only males grow curved sickle feathers as well.

Which thick-walled muscular organ grinds up a chicken's food with the help of swallowed grit?

The gizzard does the chewing for a bird that cannot chew, and it can pass food back and forth with the true stomach.

Which one rear opening serves a hen's digestive, urinary and reproductive tracts all at once?

The cloaca, also known as the vent, is shared by birds, reptiles and amphibians, whereas most placental mammals have separate openings.

Which organ at the base of a chicken's windpipe produces crowing and clucking without any vocal folds?

The syrinx sits where the trachea forks into the lungs; birds do have a larynx, but unlike a mammal's it makes no sound.

A chicken's wishbone, known to anatomists as the furcula, is formed by the fusion of which two bones?

The collarbones fuse into one forked bone, and the custom of two people pulling it apart gave it the name wishbone, first recorded in 1860.

Which ridge on a chicken's breastbone serves as the attachment site for its flight muscles?

The keel is missing in flightless birds such as ostriches, which also have denser, heavier bones than birds that fly.

What is the practice of shining a bright light through an incubating egg to check on the embryo called?

Candling takes its name from the candles first used as the light source, and the egg industry uses the same trick to grade eggs for eating.

Which organ of a chick embryo has formed and begun working by about the 44th hour of incubation?

The heart starts beating on the second day and keeps enlarging outside the body; it is not fully enclosed in the chest until about day seven.

What determines whether the yolk of a chicken egg turns out pale yellow or deep orange?

The hen's diet decides it: yellow and orange plant pigments called xanthophylls, found in maize and marigold petals, are deposited in the yolk.

What is the technical name for egg white, which protects the yolk and helps feed a growing embryo?

Albumen is about 90 per cent water with roughly 10 per cent dissolved proteins, yet it holds over half of all the protein in an egg.

Newly hatched chicks can go about two days without eating because they are busy absorbing what?

The yolk sac is drawn completely into the chick's body cavity on the twentieth day of incubation, a packed lunch for life outside the shell.

Unwashed European eggs need no refrigeration because which protective outer layer of the shell is left intact?

The cuticle is the final, outermost layer of the shell; American eggs are washed, which erodes it, so they are kept chilled instead.

What is the small white spot on the surface of an egg yolk, where an embryo forms, called?

The germinal disc, or blastodisc, is a disc of cytoplasm only a couple of millimetres across that sits on top of the yolk.

What is the hatching process called in which a chick repeatedly forces its beak tip through the shell?

Pipping cuts away a section at the blunt end of the egg as the chick rotates inside, leaving a hole through which it can emerge.

In chickens, which parent passes on the chromosome that decides whether a chick is male or female?

The mother decides, because female birds carry a mismatched ZW pair of chromosomes and males a matching ZZ, the reverse of the human XY system.

Which membrane, shared by birds, reptiles and mammals, forms a fluid-filled sac around a chick embryo?

The amnion gives its name to the Amniota, the group of reptiles, birds and mammals whose embryos all develop inside one.

What happens to egg laying when a commercial flock of hens is kept without any rooster?

It continues as normal, which is why most eggs sold for eating are unfertilised: laying flocks are simply kept without males.

Which actor won his only competitive Oscar for playing the marshal Rooster Cogburn in 1969's True Grit?

John Wayne also took the Golden Globe for the same role, the only competitive wins of his long career from either body.

A rooster's loud and sometimes shrill crowing serves as what kind of signal to other males?

Territorial warnings are only half of it: a rooster will also crow in response to any sudden disturbance in his surroundings.

The Roosters, founded in 1908 as Eastern Suburbs, are a rugby league club in which Australian city?

Sydney's Roosters are the only club to have played in every season at the elite level of the Australian game.

Which mythical beast with a rooster's head was said in legend to come from a chicken egg hatched by a toad?

The cockatrice, essentially a two-legged dragon, first appeared in English in the 14th-century Wycliffe translation of the Bible.

To start courting, a rooster may dance in a circle around a hen while lowering which part of his body?

His wing nearest the hen is dropped during the circle dance, and if she responds to his call he may go on to mate with her.

Which word, the French rendering of a rooster's crow, doubles as an expression of national pride?

Cocorico is shouted to cheer a French success, and is sometimes used ironically to poke fun at national chest-beating.

Kellogg's Corn Flakes got a rooster mascot because Kellogg resembles the word for rooster in which language?

Welsh harpist Nansi Richards, a family friend, noticed that ceiliog sounds like Kellogg; Cornelius the Rooster reached the boxes in 1957.

Alice in Chains' Vietnam War song Rooster takes its title from the childhood nickname of which member's father?

Jerry Cantrell wrote it for his father, who was given the nickname by a great-grandfather for his cocky attitude and hair that stuck straight up.

According to Plato's Phaedo, the last words of Socrates told Crito that they owed a rooster to which god?

Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine, and Crito, the old friend Socrates was speaking to, promised that the debt would be paid.

Vietnam's rare Dong Tao, also called the Dragon Chicken, is known for which unusual physical feature?

Enlarged feet make the birds hard to breed: the birds often break their own eggs with their bulky legs, so the eggs go into an incubator.

Which of these was one of the four original dipping sauces created for the Chicken McNugget?

Hot mustard launched alongside barbecue, sweet and sour, and honey after a development effort that lasted more than a year.

The Dorking chicken is named after a market town that sent birds to London from which English county?

Surrey's town of Dorking gave its name to a breed with a rectangular body and short legs that arose in the southern home counties.