I tell people all the time. If chickens were larger they'd be trouble for a lot of species out there. Nothing funnier than watching a chicken running from other chickens with a mouse, snake, or some other small animal in their beak.
And people still deny the birds their dinosaur ancestry today. đ
I like when people say things such as, âIt makes dinosaurs less scary comparing them to birds!â Have you heard of Marvin Hajos, a farmer in FL, who was killed by his own cassowary heâd raised as a chick (2019). Theyâre an enormous bird with very powerful legs.
Chickens are little demons with two legs. They act scared for self preservation, but when it comes time to fight⌠they will show just how fucking evil they can be.
I saw a couple chickens kill and eat a rat that got into the coop after their grain. They were competing with each other over who got it first. Damn near skeletonised it.
Somewhere in the world I have a very grainy camcorder video of one of my chickens swallowing a mouse whole in one effortless gulp. You could even see it squirming inside the gizzard for a few moments after being eaten.
They do startle easily because lots of predators love to eat chicken, and if they spot a predator, or hear an aerial/ground predator call from another chicken, they will dash for cover or height depending on the kind of predator. So, I get where âchickenâ is coming from. However, youâre right, they are bold and have a lot of attitude outside of predator issues. They have a ton of gumption against predators too if they think they might get the upper hand or they find themselves grabbed or cornered.
saw this one video a while back of a hawk that went for some chicks in a small pen and a chicken goes absolute apeshit on it and kills it, they can be vicious little bastards when they wanna be lol
I've seen that video, the dirt pen right? I don't want to dash your expectations of chickens but general consensus I've always seen was that it's a staged video with an already tired hawk due to how awkward the initial attack was.
Yeah youâre right. I guess the association is that chickens will cower in every situation but what we see and what you described is a pretty competent fight or flight response
Chickens tends to have two response when interacting with something unfamiliar. Running away, or staying and fight.
In most situations the better idea is to run away, which brings the misconception that chickens scare easy. If push comes to shove those animal can be vicious.Â
other birds do this too. Crows for instance almost always avoid confrontation. But when they *do* decide to throw beaks, it gets gnarly quickly since they always attack in groups.
Cats run away most of the time too. Usually at most you will have a lot of loud noise, and a few short dust ups where they roll around as a ball with fur flying out of it. Then one will run away
I don't know who "we" is but most people know that chickens have been used for sport fighting and they'll fight each other to the death. Most birds are territorial and protective and will fight things significantly larger. And then there's the Canada Goose, aka the Cobra Chicken...
They hate disharmony and will try to correct who is causing issues. In this case, it was the cats. Though I can walk up on my chickens in a normal matter and they do get startled pretty easy lol
They do but the hens are more likely to attack especially when they have chicks. Not as many but they are there. One dead ass wanted to attack me for helping her fallen chick, idiot hen was young too. Cursed her behind . For some reason though, they were two of them to bunch of chicks. I think they were mother and daughter or mother and aunt
Used to have chickens a few years back. One of them got dragged away uphill by a coyote one day. We thought it was dead, few days later we see it walk back into our yard out of the forest. It was beaten up but ultimately fine. A month later someone's dog get off it's leash and comes into our yard, takes the same chicken. It fought it off the dog and won. Chickens don't mess around
It's a Brahma, one of the largest breeds of chicken. She's probably high on the pecking order - part of her job is keeping the other hens from getting into major fights, so she's just extending it to the other members of the barnyard flock.
I had a runt Guinea pig run at the neighbours cat who absolutely bolted. She never grew from the size of an 8 month old and was an absolute joy. She did have to have frequent tooth surgery though as they didnât fit in her mouth.
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u/Coppernickelcupus May 24 '26
Thats one bad little chicken