{"id":185,"date":"2008-12-20T13:49:04","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T11:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2008\/12\/20\/chicken_tales\/"},"modified":"2008-12-20T13:49:04","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T11:49:04","slug":"chicken_tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2008\/12\/20\/chicken_tales\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicken Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A week ago I was at a departmental Christmas party.  During it they had a quiz, and one question was &#8220;Which animal has the longest tail?&#8221;  The right answer was the giraffe, but one group suggested it was the chicken.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nGuess what?  The chicken might be correct.  Thanks to Google<sup><a href=\"#fn422331272502413012d8a1\">1<\/a><\/sup>, I discovered the Japanese <a href=\"http:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/news\/The-Longest-Tail-The-Onagadori-Cocks-60852.shtml\">Onagadori<\/a> breed of chicken.  This beast has a tail that can grow to over 10m long:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/images\/news2\/The-Longest-Tail-The-Onagadori-Cocks-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"449\" height=\"458\" \/><br \/>\nApparently this happens because the breed has a mutation that means its tail feathers don&#8217;t moult every year, plus a couple of others that make it grow feathers quickly<sup><a href=\"#fn9543095425024130517cbf\">2<\/a><\/sup>.<br \/>\nTheir tails have to grow for 10 years before they attain a decent length (decent for an Onagadori cock, at any rate), during which time their tails have to be rolled up and suspended out of the way, so they don&#8217;t get dirty and worn.  Quite what the chickens themselves think of this, I don&#8217;t know.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.longtail-fowl.com\/html\/onag.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.longtail-fowl.com\/\/images\/jpg%27s\/ONAGADORI\/unknown_copyrights\/onaga1.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Well, it&#8217;s better than a penguin suit.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"footnote\"><sup>1<\/sup> Not googol: what that is was another question in the quiz.<\/p>\n<p class=\"footnote\"><sup>2<\/sup> There&#8217;s more about the genetics <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1079\/WPS19700014\">in this paper<\/a>.  If someone has electronic access, could they send it to me?  Thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A week ago I was at a departmental Christmas party. During it they had a quiz, and one question was &#8220;Which animal has the longest tail?&#8221; The right answer was the giraffe, but one group suggested it was the chicken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}