NewPhilosopherOn September 10, 1945, Lloyd
Olsen was slaughtering chickens on
hisfarminFruita,Colorado.Among
hisunfortunatevictimsthatdaywasa
WyandotteroosternamedMike.Like
manychickens,Mike’sheadlessbody
kept running around for a few mo-
mentsafterdecapitation.Unlikeother
chickens,however,Mike kept going.
Andscratching.Andtryingtoeat.
WhenMike wasstill onhis feet
the nextmorning,showingno inten-
tion ofbehaving like a corpse,Lloyd
saw an opportunity. ‘Miracle Mike’
the headless chicken soon became a
sensation onthesideshowcircuit.On
some estimates Mike was pulling in
theequivalentof$50,000 a monthin
today’smoney;Lloydwasable tobuy
newfarmequipmentandtreatedhim-
selftoa newChevypickup.
Likemostcelebrities,Mikerelied
pretty heavily on hisentourage.Un-
able to clear his own throat, Mike
neededhishandlerstodoit forhim
witha syringe.InMarch 1947 Lloyd
andClarawerewokenintheirmotel
roomin Phoenixbythesoundof Mike
gaggingona pieceofcorn.They’dac -
cidentallyleftthesyringebackatthe
fairground – and so Mike died the
ultimate rock stardeath: choking to
deathinhishotelroomontour.
But Mike wasn’t really there for
hisfame.Hepresumablyhadnocon-
sciousnessaftertheaxefell.Hismove-
ments(orsoit’sassumed)weremere
reflex,madepossiblebythefatalblow
leaving just enough brain behind to
takecareofautonomicfunctions.So,
whendidMikeactuallydie?InColo-
rado in 1945 whenhisconsciousness
cametoanend,orinPhoenixin 1947
whenhisheart stopped?Were thou-
sands of people paying to see a live
headlesschicken,ora zombie?
While Mike is commemorated
witha statue andin an annualfes-
tivalinFruita,hisstorymayseema
mere curio of post-war Americana.
Butit pointstodeepproblemswithMiracle Mike, the
headless chicken
Miracle Mike, the headless chicken
the binary concepts of life and death
that we rely on so extensively.
For most of human history, deter-
mining when someone had died was
fairly straightforward. Consciousness,
breathing, and heartbeat all tended to
stop around the same time. Our con-
cept of death remains correspondingly
simple: an instantaneous and irrevers-
ible change in which an organism goes
from functional to non-functional. One
moment you’re there, the next you ain’t.
Not everything in the natural
world dies so cleanly, of course. Say-
ing when a tree is dead, for instance, is
often very difficult. But that ambiguity
has never really bothered us humans –
until quite recently.
In a 1972 Lancet paper, Scottish
surgeon Bryan Jennett and Ameri-
can neurologist Fred Plum noted that
some patients with catastrophic brain
trauma could now, for the first time
in history, be kept alive indefinitely.
Their hearts continued to beat, lungs
continued to breathe, gut continued
to digest. Unlike coma patients, they
were even technically ‘awake’ much
of the time. But they had no ‘higher’
brain activity, and so no awareness, noby Patrick Stokes