Gopher × Chicken

Mammalian Hybrids

EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ

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Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.

—John 4:48

Plains Pocket Gopher
Geomys bursarius

Note: Any claim that hybrids can be produced from this highly disparate and very poorly documented cross would require confirmation from a specimen.

Ostensible gopher-chicken hybrids have been reported on in American newspapers. One such animal was reported in the Willmar Tribune (Dec. 3, 1913, p. 7, col. 7), a newspaper published in Willmar, Minnesota:

Freak Chicken

    A chicken with a gopher head is the freak that is being exhibited by John Lemon at his barber shop this week. The chicken was raised on Lemon’s farm west of town [Tyler, Minnesota], and is probably one of the greatest freaks ever discovered of the fowl kind. The hen has no beak, and the face and head resemble that of a gopher very much, while the body is that of a perfect chicken of the brown leghorn breed.
    A hen with a gopher head in the gopher state is something to take notice of.
    Mr. Lemon is dickering with the managers of several museums in the largest cities of the United States. As a curiosity the hen is worth considerable and the chances are that some museum will have the hen on exhibit within a short time.—Tyler Journal.

The story originally ran in the Tyler Journal, published in Tyler, Minnesota. There are many kinds of gophers, but given the location of the reported event (Tyler), the rodent in question would almost certainly have been Geomys bursarius, the Plains Pocket Gopher. According to Wikipedia, these rodents spend 72 percent of their time underground, but do emerge in search of food or mates.

What seems to be a separate but similar case, was described at some length in The Bowbells Tribune (Aug. 20, 1909, p. 5, col. 6), a newspaper published in Bowbells, North Dakota:

Wilhelm Peterson had on exhibition on the streets of the city on Saturday last a freak of nature in the shape of a year old hen having the head, mouth and nose of a gopher, and with four teeth standing out in bold relief whenever the mouth of the freak was opened. Wilhelm says the hen was hatched as a chicken in a incubator last year and that it was raised with the other chickens, eating and roosting with them, but that instead of picking her feed off the ground as a chicken does, it takes the kernels of grain and nibbles them as a gopher does and drinks water as does a cat, lapping it up with the tongue. If one only saw the head of this freak, with the body covered from view, he’d wager most any amount that he was looking at a gopher. There is no sign whatever of the chicken bill, the mouth "happening" just under the face, as does that of a gopher, and two little nostrils above that extend or contract with the drawing of the freak’s breath. Wilhelm was offered $25 for the thing by Ed. Drinkwater, but he simply made the reply that it was worth $1000 if ’twas worth a cent, and if he can’t get his price in this country he may conclude to take it to Denmark this fall, where the people know how to value such a freak and are ever willing to pay the price.

At the present day Bellbows is west of the range of Geomys bursarius, and well within the range of Thomomys talpoides, the Northern Pocket Gopher.

It’s interesting to learn that both these creatures were reportedly hatched from eggs. Not only does this indicate that the direction of the cross would be male gopher × hen, but it also provides the answer to the age-old question: Which came first the gopher-chicken or the egg? Obviously, the answer would be the egg!

Related crosses:

Chicken × Mouse >>

Chicken × Rat >>

Chicken × Rabbit >>

Table of contents >>

Bibliography >>

Biology Dictionary >>

By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).

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