
Chickens 'gang up' to kill intruder fox on French farm - howard941
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47551786
======
exhilaration
The community I live in has a chicken coop - our first small batch was
decimated by a single fox, one a single night, when the door was left open. It
took only one chicken back to eat but it killed 6 others - 6 docile, happy
chickens. That's what foxes (normally) do to chicken coops.

~~~
kylegordon
Standard frenzy behaviour for a fox. It's pointless to anthropomorphize them,
as it's just natural for them to kill now with the intent of coming back to
collect the bodies for later consumption.

Just like your average labrador will inhale food until it's too large to walk.
Binging is a natural instinct in feast or famine capable animals.

~~~
ekianjo
Based on my experience cats tend to overeat a lot more than dogs.

~~~
jonlucc
It really depends on the specific animal, but common wisdom is that you can't
just leave a bowl of food out for a dog. Cats on the other hand often are
free-feeders (leave out a big bowl of food and refill it on a schedule). Of
our 2 cats, one will eat until she vomits and one will barely touch food if
it's out at the wrong time.

~~~
pxc
It depends a lot on the dog— what I've seen with dogs is similar to what you
describe with your cats.

There are 4 dogs in my house, one belonging to me and three belonging to my
roommate.

Mine won't really overeat unless she's offered a lot of something extremely
appealing (like human food). At least 2 of my roommate's dogs will eat until
they make themselves sick, though. The last one, I'm not sure.

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simonsarris
This is called mobbing and birds are most famously known to do it, I'm kind of
surprised they don't mention the behavior by name.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing_(animal_behavior)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing_\(animal_behavior\))

~~~
frosted-flakes
Anyone who's attacked a chicken in The Legend of Zelda can attest to this
behaviour.

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mykowebhn
After reading many of the comments here, I sort of understand the need to make
chickens seem like monsters. Sometimes they can be quite mean. However, I've
known many chickens and their personalities are really quite diverse. Most
chickens, when raised humanely, as pets, are quite docile and friendly, even
some of the roosters I've known.

~~~
cal5k
In my mind I replaced "chicken" with "developer" and had a good chuckle.

~~~
mykowebhn
Reminds me of this developer we were interviewing once. He asked if we treat
our developers like mushrooms. I asked what he meant by that. He said do you
keep them in the dark and feed them sh*t?

He didn't get the job.

~~~
tonyarkles
Funny enough, that statement would have won points with me. The first time I
heard that phrase was in "Soul of a New Machine", and it would have been a
good ice breaker :). That being said... definitely not something I would
personally drop in an interview.

Edit: also, there's a final piece of that that's critical:

> Tom West practices the "Mushroom Theory of Management" – "keeping them in
> the dark, feeding them shit, and watch them grow."

Many companies stop after the first two parts and miss the third.

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grawprog
Yeah....chickens are assholes. They'll come at you. They'll tear each other up
pretty good too. I've seen them go after dogs before. They really are like
watching little dinosaurs.

~~~
gatherhunterer
My first thought was that they had no idea it was a fox and were just trying
to kill something. The reason poultry feed has to be scattered over a wide
area is that they will peck through other chickens, killing them in the
process, before turning and eating from an open spot if they feel they need to
compete for food. Turkeys are worse than chickens. An amish turkey farmer once
told me that if you leave a bucket of feed with the turkeys you’ll end up with
a bucket of dead, half-eaten turkeys and all of the feed you started with.

~~~
StavrosK
I understand that they'd kill each other, but why would they _all_ kill each
other, who eats them, and who puts the carcasses in the bucket?

So many questions this raises...

~~~
gatherhunterer
They get into the bucket to get the food and are pecked to death by the one
that climbs in on top of them, and so on.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh wow, that's brutal. Thanks for explaining.

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meowface
To be clear, this was one young fox vs. 3,000 chickens, trapped with them in a
coop due to an auto-closing door. There was no way that fox was getting out
alive.

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maxxxxx
I always find it interesting that a lot of prey animals sometimes fight back
with success but they don’t seem to repeat that behavior next time. I have
seen videos of zebras going after a lion without problem but next time they
will just run away again and the slowest will get killed.

~~~
vezycash
For social animals like chicken, sheep, even humans the action of the group is
often determined by a few - the leaders or the first to act.

If the first chicken panicked and ran, the rest would. I'm guessing the fox
ran into the aggressive ones first.

To put humans into context here. Once, a couple of bombs went off in an Amory.
People panicked and ran. Everyone ran in the direction of those who ran first.

Long story short, a few died from the blast. But, hundreds died from falling
off a cliff and drowning in a canal.

~~~
magduf
All those people didn't know how to swim? Or was the fall too high?

~~~
Kye
Drowning humans latch on to whatever's near out of instinct. Some portion of
100+ doing that will get a lot of good swimmers killed.

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BurningFrog
3000 chickens vs a not full grown fox.

Sounds like a zombie movie type of fight.

~~~
rbanffy
An Aardman zombie movie.

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wnevets
Someone invented red colored chicken tinted to stop chickens from killing
other chickens who happen to be bleeding.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_eyeglasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_eyeglasses)

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belorn
Chickens are omnivores and will kill and happily eat other animals when they
can. A fact that is very clear in regard to rodents that like to steal chicken
feed.

That they managed to kill a juvenile fox is a bit impressive however.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
This is exactly why commercials that claim "we feed our chickens a 100%
vegetarian diet" irritate the crap out of me. Chickens will eat anything that
fits into their beak and sometimes things that won't. e.g., young frogs, small
snakes, etc.

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bredren
This reminds me of the cat that saved the boy from the dog.
[https://youtu.be/ftIRIPcsqxo](https://youtu.be/ftIRIPcsqxo)

~~~
magduf
I love that video. The comments are great too, and they're right: cats are
much better pets than dogs. When was the last time you heard of a cat
attacking and killing someone (especially a child)? It happens with dogs all
the time. Dog apologists will always spout some BS about "those dogs weren't
raised right", but it just doesn't happen with cats.

~~~
icebraining
I'm a cats-over-dogs person, but cats can definitively attack people. Killing
is probably quite rare, but then again they don't have the size and strength
of a pit bull or rottweiler. Yorkshire terriers probably haven't killed many
persons either.

~~~
magduf
I can't say I've ever heard of a cat attacking a person without some kind of
reason. Cats, even the most ill-mannered ones, just aren't known to be
aggressive towards humans the way dogs are. The only times I've heard of cats
attacking people is when they've been tormented, such as by children.

~~~
bredren
I'm so cat positive, I'm like a cat lady. But sometimes cats get aggressive
and attack people for sure. Even non-tormented ones. It does matter how you
treat them and how much you play with them but make no mistake cats will
attack, sometimes viscously.

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bryanrasmussen
I'd heard you weren't supposed to let the fox into the henhouse, but I had
envisioned a different outcome.

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Kurtz79
They have nothing on Japanese bees though:

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2174097-honeybees-
gang-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2174097-honeybees-gang-up-to-
roast-invading-hornets-alive-at-a-terrible-cost/)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
European honeybees do this too (source: am beekeeper)

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doubleunplussed
Someone didn't play enough Zelda

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DiseasedBadger
I support this haha. I once lost 6 chickens and a turkey to either a bobcat or
a coyote. All in one night.

I support research into re-activating latent dinosaur genes in chickens.

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dman
Am I the only one who thought of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Run)
when they read this article?

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itissid
Their species murder rate is 100%. Can you blame them.

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Darkforest3
Some say chickens are one of the most abundant vertebrate on the planet
(20B+). Let's just hope they don't gang up on us!

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negamax
I read chicken coop and chicken coup automagically until reading the comments!
How much context guessing happens in our brains!

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newsgremlin
Power to the (chicken) people.

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bovermyer
As Link has discovered time and time again, _never piss off the chickens._

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mirceal
this reminds me out using all my SCVs to defend against Zealots in early game.

~~~
mirceal
I see we have some Protoss among us here on HN :)

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madengr
Sounds like a new torture method: Death by a Thousand Chickens.

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newaccoutnas
A new idea for a Hitchcock film...

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rbanffy
Aardman Animation will probably do it.

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laylomo2
The fox should have used the master sword.

