Chickens peck the fox's intruder to death, because they're dinosaurs

A fox has learned the hard way that it is unwise to play with a bunch of dinosaurs.

The young fox, about 6 months old, probably thought he had found gold as soon as he entered a henhouse at dusk last week at a farm school in Brittany, France. northwestern France.

But chickens, like all birds, are descendants of dinosaurs. And this cooperative owned 3000 chickens. As soon as the sun went down and the light-controlled automatic hatch door closed behind the fox, the birds Tyrannosaurus rex and attacked the fox. [Photos: Birds Evolved from Dinosaurs, Museum Exhibit Shows]

"There was a flock instinct, and they attacked it with their beaks," AFP Pascal Daniel, head of school agriculture at the AFP news agency, told AFP. Agriculture Le Gros Chêne. "He had neck shots, pecks."

The next day, school students found the fox's corpse in a corner of the cage.

It's no secret to chicken farmers that these birds can be vicious. Chicken herds have a clear hierarchy, sometimes called hierarchical order, with the largest, strongest, and most aggressive bird in power. As indicated by the name "hierarchical order", these high-caliber birds make their way in intimidating and pecking at the weakest birds, according to Modern Farmer, a media aimed at food producers and consumers. .

Birds at the top of the hierarchy have better access to food, water and dustbaths, as well as the best places in the cooperative, reported Modern Farmer. But these bosses also have a special responsibility. they must be constantly on the lookout for predators and guide other birds towards safety if the danger is near. In this case, the chickens did not flee but regrouped to ambush the fox.

"They can be tough enough when they're in a bag," Daniel told the regional newspaper Ouest-France.

Genetics may be the reason, in part, that some chickens dominate their congeners (and, in this case, a juvenile fox). According to a 2016 study by Scientific Reports, Chinese scientists have discovered a number of areas of the chicken genome associated with aggressive behavior traits.

However, chickens usually do not win the battle against big predators. The last time a fox entered the hen house, more than a year ago, the match was not so good for hens, Daniel said.

Originally published on Science live.