How to hypnotize a chicken

By Jack Brummet, Unexplained Phenomena Ed.

Thanks to Jeff Clinton! 

An illustration of a hypnotized chicken from an 18th century book by the famous Jesuit scientist Athanasius Kircher

OK, it's not technically hypnotizing chickens, but more properly, causing tonic immobility[1].   It is related to snake charming, which you have probably seen in cartoons, or B Movies.

A chicken can be put into a trance/hypnotized/lulled into tonic immobility by holding its head against the ground, and then drawing a line along the ground with a stick or a finger, starting at its beak and then running out in front of the chicken. A chicken hypnotized like this will will sit in a trance for anywhere between between 15 seconds and 30 minutes.

In the The  1985 Old Farmer’s Almanac, Linda Riggins wrote about hypnotized chickens:

“A bird will stay hypnotized for a couple of seconds, minutes, or hours,” says White, although in her demonstrations they’re “out” for only minutes.  Regardless of the method used, a sudden movement or loud noise will bring the  chicken out of the hypnotic trance.

"White adds, 'Pheasants go out faster than any other bird. Wild pheasants are  very nervous and high-strung, and usually very easy to hypnotize.' In her  demonstrations, she is protective of pheasants, because after they come out of  hypnosis, they are likely to hurt themselves unless they are carefully  monitored. Noting that domestic birds are more difficult to hypnotize than wild  ones, she suggests that one reason may be wild birds are using a survival skill  when they submit to hypnosis.

"White has reported the results of her experiments at several New Jersey  science conferences and fairs. In one of her studies of 11 birds, the heart and  respiration rates, when measured five minutes after hypnosis, were significantly  lower than in the pre-hypnotic state. For example, in a Bantam White Cochin  cock, the heart rate before hypnosis was 457 beats per minute and after hypnosis  372. The rates for this bird’s respiration were 22 and 20 breaths per minute,  respectively. The temperatures of nine of these birds went down or were  unchanged in the posthypnotic state."

Interestingly enough, in press briefings, the U.S. military--when trying to avoid divulging information, gives reporters briefings with 20 minutes of intentionally dull PowerPoint presentations and 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone who is still awake. Those presentations are called hypnotizing chickens around The Pentagon.



[1] From the Wikipedia page on tonic immobility:  "Tonic immobility is a natural state of paralysis that animals enter, in most cases when presented with a threat. Some scientists relate it to mating in certain animals like the shark.

"Some sharks can be placed in a tonic state. The shark remains in this state of paralysis for an average of fifteen minutes before it recovers. Scientists have exploited this phenomenon to study shark behaviour. The effects of chemical shark repellent have been studied to test effectiveness and to narrow down dose sizes, concentrations, and time to awaken."

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