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A fertilized, incubated chicken egg takes about 21 days to hatch; and while most of us have seen what chicks look like at either end of the developmental spectrum (either sunny-side-up in a frying pan or newly hatched in a nature documentary), the fact that egg shells aren't see-through means that not many people have seen what goes on between days 2 and 20. More »
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Sex is probably the most popular pastime in the history of life on Earth — which makes it all the more ridiculous that so many of us have such a mealy-mouthed way of talking about it. Take the expression "the birds and the bees," which we use to avoid speaking more explicitly about courtship and sex to our kids. More »
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Female chickens are among the most promiscuous members of the animal kingdom, with wild and domestic fowl alike tending to mate with way more males than necessary to fertilize their eggs. More »
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Paleontologist Jack Horner is like a lot of us: as a child, he wanted a pet dinosaur — a dream he's working to make reality. In a recent TED talk, Horner explained why the Chickensaurus is dinosaur's best hope. More »
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Late last year, a British hen named Gertie stopped laying eggs. She then started crowing like a rooster, and suddenly her entire appearance seemed to morph into a male. So just what is going on here? More »
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We usually think of fossil fuels as an energy source, but petroleum is also the raw materials used in all the world's plastics. Now leftover chicken feathers could allow us to keep using plastics in a world after oil. More »
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In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in what is now the Bahamas, changing the world forever. But was he first non-indigenous person to reach the Americas? Vikings got there before him, and possibly Polynesians too...and those are just the sane theories. More »
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This is the Transylvanian naked neck chicken, popularly known as the "churkey" because it appears to have the body of a chicken and the head of a turkey. And this mysterious mutation could actually help feed the world. More »
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We've all heard of freshly beheaded chickens running around with their heads cut off. But an actual headless chicken couldn't maintain a balanced run for more than a second or two, right? Wrong. One chicken managed to make more than just a few twitching movements. It lived long enough to acquire a name, a stage career, and web immortality. This indestructable titan is known to this day as Mike, The Headless Chicken. More »
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The best part about the holidays, besides all the drinking and the crying, is the holiday specials, where everyone's favorite show gets jazzed up with cheer. Here are clips from some of our favorites.
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This week marks the debut of Seth Green's latest Robot Chicken Star Wars special, and we've got the first laugh-out-loud clip from it. Also, there's a sweeps-month shock on Terminator, Woolsey's up for his performance evaluation and it's up to the Stargate Atlantis crew to save his job, True Blood's Lafayette gets political and Fringe is back. More »
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