Dog × Chicken

Mammalian Hybrids

A reconstruction of the Scottdale bird as reported in the news story quoted below.

Claims that hybrids can be produced from this highly disparate cross require confirmation from a specimen.

Over the years there have been quite a few accounts published describing creatures that, if accurately reported, would seem to be dog-chicken hybrids. Several of these reports are quoted verbatim on this page.

A chicken with dog ears

A notice about the first of these two bizarre wonder hens, reconstructed in the picture at right, appeared in The West Virginian (Apr. 5, 1915, p. 8, col. 2), a newspaper published in Fairmont, West Virginia:

Another report, with additional information, appeared in The Washington Herald (Apr. 26, 1915, p. 1, col. 2), a newspaper published in Washington, D.C.:

Another report, in a New York newspaper, stated that “The hen is otherwise normal and an excellent layer.”

No normal bird has external ears, structures that biologists call “pinnae,” but dogs and most other mammals do. So the question then arises: Could the anomalous creature reported in these 1915 news stories have been a dog-chicken hybrid? If not, then one would have to suppose that some simple mutation in a chicken could somehow produce, de novo, such a complex structure as a terrier’s ear (or else that the reports were simply a hoax).

As to the feasibility of the requisite mating, various YouTube videos document the fact that small dogs have been occasionally known to mate with hens. Further, it is well known that chickens will adopt the young of other types of animals, including dogs, as shown in the picture at right. (Screenshots of news stories about hens who adopted puppies appear below on this page.)

A chicken with a dog’s tail

A separate event was also reported later that same year. One notice about the event appeared in The Sunday Telegram (Jun. 20, 1915, p. 6, col. 6), a newspaper published in Clarksburg, West Virginia:

A longer story about the same hatchling appeared in The Elizabeth Daily Journal (Jun. 16, 1915, p. 15, col. 7), a newspaper published in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the city where the event supposedly occurred:

Imprinting

It’s well established that hens will adopt puppies. In fact, hens are renowned for their willingness to adopt the young of almost any animal. In the present context, it’s significant that hens will raise puppies because most mammals imprint on whatever kind of animal raises them, that is, a male puppy raised by a hen, when it reached sexual maturity, would quite likely choose to mate with a hen in preference to one of his own kind (About imprinting >>). And such things do happen as shown in various video on YouTube. In the first two news stories below, hens adopt puppies. In the third, the reverse is reported, that is, a terrier adopts eight chicks.

Above: A notice about a hen in North Carolina adopting ten puppies. From The Times Dispatch (Dec. 14, 1906, p. 1), a newspaper published in Richmond, Virginia.

Above: A news story about a hen voluntarily adopting four puppies. From the San Francisco Call (Jul. 17, 1912, p. 1).

Above: A news story about a terrier voluntarily adopting eight chicks. From the Wilmington Daily Gazette (Aug. 16, 1873, p. 4), a newspaper published in Wilmington, Delaware.

Incidentally, the Winsted, Connecticut freak referred to in the story just quoted was merely a case of a dog lying on a nest of chicken eggs and hatching them out, and no hybrid was alleged (four other examples of the same phenomenon: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example 4).

However, the willingness of a dog to incubate chicken eggs is relevant to the present context given that such behavior can lead to aberrant imprinting. Dogs and chickens have also been known to befriend each other and work together to care for nests of eggs (Example 1, Example 2, Example 3), which might also easily have a effect on imprinting.

Chickens with dog’s heads

In 1870, the Illinois Statesman, a newspaper published in Bloomington, Illinois printed a notice about a museum exhibiting a chicken with a dog’s head (source). And in an earlier report, which may or may not refer to the same specimen, Recueil des actes de la séance publique de l’Académie impériale (1841, p. 39), a French language journal published by the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, reported that Karl Eduard Miram (1811-1887) gave a presentation before the Academy entitled A Description of a Monstrous Hen with a Face like a Dog’s (Beschreibung eines monströsen Huhnes mit hundeähnlichem Gesichte) (source). The actual text (in translation) of the notice reads “Mr. Miram, prosector at the Lithuanian Medical and Surgical Academy at Vilna gave us an anatomical description, accompanied by drawings, of a monstrous chicken with a canine face, which recalled the abnormality described by Fischer von Waldheim at Moscow some 20 years ago.” Miram was a professor of physiology and anatomy.

Above: A report that appeared in the South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail (Dec. 21, 1872, p. 7, col. 6), a newspaper published in Adelaide, South Australia.

A dog-turkey hybrid >>

Chicken-human hybrids >>

A dog and a chicken are very different kinds of animals, so different that many would say the production of a genuine dog-chicken hybrid would be impossible. However, similar hybrids have been reported, such as the dog-turkey hybrid pictured at right). Another, but rather more shocking chicken-mammal cross that has in fact been reported—and for which a specimen is available (see photo at right below)—is chicken x human. In this latter case there are many separate reports on record, for example, a live chicken with a human face on display at the Moscow Museum of Natural History.

And hybrids are always produced between different kinds of animals. The only question in the present case is how different the parents can be in a hybrid cross if they are to actually produce offspring. A certain amount of light is shed on this issue by the fact that commercial breeders have been able to produce hybrids between very different kinds of birds, for example, turkey and chicken, or quail and chicken. But the rate at which mature viable hybrids are produced in such crosses is quite low. In the turkey-chicken cross just mentioned, Olsen (1962) reports that it is necessary, on average, to carry out some 1,000 artificial inseminations to produce a single adult hybrid (see the picture of a turkey-chicken hybrid below).

So perhaps the same is true for dogs and chickens? Perhaps such weird crosses, ones between a mammal and a bird, require even more inseminations to produce a single viable hybrid? 10,000? 100,000? Who knows?

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Pig-human hybrids >>