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Q: Domestic Avian Behaviour ( Answered 4 out of 5 stars,   8 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Domestic Avian Behaviour
Category: Science
Asked by: web_bod-ga
List Price: $3.00
Posted: 01 Jul 2002 07:19 PDT
Expires: 31 Jul 2002 07:19 PDT
Question ID: 35460
Why did the chicken cross the road ?

Clarification of Question by web_bod-ga on 04 Jul 2002 05:22 PDT
Thanks for all of your 'wonderful' suggestions :) - can somebody
please answer the question !!! then I can pay one of you :)

- cheers !
Answer  
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
Answered By: politicalguru-ga on 04 Jul 2002 06:39 PDT
Rated:4 out of 5 stars
 
Dear Web-Bud, 

What do you do when you're not sure? Ask Google, right? So I went
ahead and asked them -
://www.google.com/search?q=%22why+did+the+chicken+cross+the+road%3F%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
. It gave an amazing 16,300 answers!

You didn't except that, huh? 16,300 answers (or sites that provide an
answer) to your question. I am not sure the question "is there a god"
gets so many answers (okay, I checked: "Is there a God" loses with
only 13,900 sites that provide an answer, see
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22is+there+a+god%22).

Actually, I think these questions are connected. They are connected to
the fact that we're all looking for meaning in this world. After all,
it couldn't be that the chicken crossed the road without any meaning
and that there is actually no answer to this question, like there
could be no answer to the question "what is the meaning of life"
(12,800 links, loses both to God and to
chickens://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22what+is+the+meaning+of+life%22,
and that is *after* we KNOW that the answer is 42! see
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=35935).

I am not the only person thinking that. Tammy Yap, a Singaporian,
thinks just like me. Conclusion I: Chickens are everywhere and are
related to everything meaningful or not in or universe. When she tries
to answer the question, she thinks about Singaporian politicians and
culture. See http://web.singnet.com.sg/~jsbhappy/waste/chickencross_sgp.html
The Gay and Lesbian Mormons think just like Tammy and myself -
http://www.affirmation.org/chicken.htm - it is part of the great
secrets of the universe and connected to ideological, philosophical
and cultural views. See also here for the supporters of my theory
http://www.romwell.com/humor/Chicken.htm ; and this, where George W
Bush tried to solve the mysteries of the universe
http://silverscreentest.com/koala/eucalyptus/chicken.jpg

What does it mean? The question is also culturally related and
depedant. I have two stories about my childhood to demonstrate. The
first is the day we found a chicken. We were driving to the town to
pick up my brother from the bus station, when we actually spotted, in
the industrial area, a chicken (crossing the road of course). Turns up
later she was escaping from a slaughter house. Conclusion II: some
chickens cross the road to avoid death, although the road itself poses
danger to the chickens.

The other story is from when I was older and lived in a weird place.
It had lots of old Middle Eastern immigrants, and on weekends/fridays
I used to see live chickens, in baskets, crossing the road with their
owners. No doubt, that the purpose of these chickens was to become a
chicken soup, after they crossed the road. Conclusion III - sometimes
the purpose of crossing the road *is* death (or soup, depends how you
look at it). This (sick) picture demonstrate that the lives of
chickens are no joke
http://www.cardhouse.com/drcliff/studio/gallery/rk15.htm

Some people think the chicken crosses the road to lay eggs. They take
the issues seriously as I do
http://www.topangamessenger.com/Photos/v25n07/chicken.jpg and the
explanation here - http://www.topangamessenger.com/current/views.shtml#candid

This is of course purely cultural, since the Brits (or Scotts, in this
case) see chickens crossing the way completely different :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1525000/images/_1527602_joke300.jpg

Moreover, in this commercialised time and age, you wouldn't think the
poor chickens can escape the economic reality? No. They are also used,
and while crossing the road, they sell stuff -
http://audiobuilders.com/sound_effects.htm ;
http://site109.webhost4life.com/lunchroom/themes/preview/6/996.jpg
(pocket PC skin) and http://www.dixiechicken.com/ss.htm

None of these answers is what
http://www.whydidthechickencrosstheroad.com/ said. They simplify the
issue and turn it into a big joke. Nevertheless, they offers several
answers to the question. They have many answers. So many, that there
is actually "Fowlest Jokes Of The Month".

I hope I helped you. Now I have only one question - what came first,
the chicken or the egg?
web_bod-ga rated this answer:4 out of 5 stars
well done :)

Comments  
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
From: thx1138-ga on 01 Jul 2002 07:39 PDT
 
It all depends on who you ask !

“ DR. SEUSS - Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a
toad? Yes! The chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I've not
been told!

ERNEST HEMINGWAY - To die. In the rain. 

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. - I envision a world where all chickens will
be free to cross without having their motives called into question.

 GRANDPA - In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road.
Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good
enough for us.

ARISTOTLE - It is the nature of chickens to cross the road. 

KARL MARX - It was a historical inevitability. 

SADDAM HUSSEIN - This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were
quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK - To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

FOX MULDER - You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many
more chickens have to cross before you believe it?

FREUD - The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken
crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

BILL GATES - I have just released eChicken 2000, which will not only
cross roads,but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and
balance your checkbook - and Internet Explorer is an inextricable part
of a Chicken.

EINSTEIN - Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move
beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON - I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you
mean by "chicken"? Could you define "chicken" please?

COLONEL SANDERS - I missed one?  “

From:
http://search.ngfl.gov.uk/majordomo-html/senco-forum/senco-forum.archive.0104/msg00311.html
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
From: thx1138-ga on 01 Jul 2002 07:52 PDT
 
Here are some more theories from some eminent (and not so eminent
people)

“Plato: For the greater good. 

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability. 

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a
chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but
also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with
such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely
chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its
pancreas.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered
within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each
interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be
discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll
find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment
would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two. 

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road
gazes also across you.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake. 

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its
sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that
it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be
of its own free will.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt
necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical
juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences
into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself,
the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

 Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into
the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being
which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road
crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

 Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken- nature.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing
events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented
avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement
formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable
occurence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish. 

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death. 

Epicurus: For fun. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it. 

Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it. 

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain. 

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken
was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit. 

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored)
reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road? 

Ronald Reagan: I forget. 

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the
transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of
the opportunity.

The Sphinx: You tell me. 

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too! 

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow
out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated. 

Molly Yard: It was a hen! 

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side. 

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages. 

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud. 

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that. 

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings. 

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl. 

Othello: Jealousy. 

Dr Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you
would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such
a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

 Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning. 

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph. 

Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town
ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although,
perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross
it as the chicken in question.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance
clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome,
filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question
the actions of one in all respects his superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er. 

Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter) 

Hamlet: That is not the question. 

Donne: It crosseth for thee. 

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey. 

Constable: To get a better view. “

  Taken from:

http://eserver.org/philosophy/chicken.txt
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
From: huntsman-ga on 01 Jul 2002 09:15 PDT
 
Fortunately, the theories of Charles Darwin and other scientific
notables have proven their worth again. The process of natural
selection -- cruel to some, inevitably beneficial to others -- has
resulted in a new generation of chickens more aware of the inherent
dangers of our modern urban environment.

Assisted by the convenience of affordable public transportation, these
genetically superior chickens have adopted the unique survival
strategy of simply waiting.

For the bus, that is:

Chickens Waiting for the Bus
http://www.whydidthechickencrosstheroad.com/images/chickens-bus.jpg

Let us not linger in the uninformed suppositions and futile wanderings
of the past, but instead let us look forward to a bright and hopeful
future for all chickens.

huntsman
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
From: netcrazy-ga on 01 Jul 2002 10:33 PDT
 
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

CBS-TV's Andy Rooney
I could have said "Didja ever wonder why it is that the chicken
crossed the road, and which road it was?" But I didn't. I did ask some
turkeys, however, and this is what they said...

President William Jefferson Clinton
That depends on how yuh define "road". 

COBOL Programmers
0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES THEN
PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
ELSE
GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING

Hillary Rodham Clinton
I don't bake cookies; I don't cook chicken. I am not a crook -- er, I
am not a cook.

James Carville
Because the mean-spirited Republican majority in congress was going to
cook the chicken and leave only the sun-bleached bones picked bare for
the American people that they'd throw out in the street, Larry!

Ayn Rand
A chicken's first duty is to itself. And only by living for itself is
it able to achieve the things which are the glory of chickenkind. Such
is the nature of achievement.

A Typical Politically Correct Person
Don't blame the chicken! Society is to blame. The chicken did cross
the road, but he or she was merely a victim of this racist, bigoted,
sexist society. We are all to blame, for failing to provide... [blah,
blah, blah -- ad nauseam]

The Channel 7 (WSVN, Miami) News Team
In a story you will see only on WSVN, a young homeless chicken crosses
the road in Citron Beach for the very first time... The orphaned
chicken is hit by a speeding car and is thrown sky high... Authorities
are still trying to pick up the pieces. At the family's request, the
chicken's remains will be used to make chicken soup for the orphaned
chicks...
This just in... Is OJ's golf game getting worse, now that he's in the
custody battle of his life?

Tom Leykis
I cannot bee-LEEVE that women are SO shocked to hear that the reason
the chicken crossed the road is because the rooster was trying to get
into her pants!

Rush Limbaugh
It was having more fun than a chicken should be allowed to have,
listening to the Rush Limbaugh program on the EIB network and reveling
in its righteousness!

Gilligan and the Skipper
The traffic started getting rough; the chicken had to cross. If not
for the plumage of its peerless tail the chicken would be lost, the
chicken would be lost.

Deanna Troi
It was experiencing -- GREAT PAIN -- TORMENT! 

George Bush
Read my chicken lips. To face a kinder, gentler thousand points of
headlights.

Kurt Vonnegut
And so it goes -- to the other side.

H. Ross Perot
No, no, it's not about me, Larry. It's about the chicken.

Robert Frost
To cross the road less traveled by. 

Jean Chretien
OK, for me, de chicken, 'e crossed de road because 'is team was der,
and because 'e 'ad de plan.

Bob Dole
Bob Dole says "To get to the other side."

Sigmund Freud
The chicken obviously was female and obviously interpreted the pole on
which the cross walk sign was mounted as a phallic symbol of which she
was envious, selbstverstaendlich.

Bill Gates
We own the road. We own the chicken. It's none of your damn business.

Western New York Retailers
To see the hens in Hens & Kelly's window.

Omar Khayam
The moving chicken fingers write, and having writ, move on.

Moses
Know ye that it is unclean to eat the chicken that has crossed the
road, and that the chicken that crosseth the road doth so for its own
preservation.

Sir Isaac Newton
Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to
cross the road.

Plato
For the greater good.

Pierre de Fermat
I just don't have room here to give the full explanation... 

Karl Marx
It was a historical inevitability.

Chico Marx
Why a duck? Why-a-no chicken?

Groucho Marx
You try to cross over there a chicken, and you'll find out why-a-no
chicken. It's deep water, that's viaduct.

WWNN's Adam Clatsoff
If you had been hatched where the chicken was hatched, and had been
raised where the chicken was raised, and eaten the same chicken feed
that the chicken had eaten, you probably would have crossed the road,
too.

WFTL's Dante DeAngelis
Now let me get this straight. You're saying a chicken crossed the
road, and now YOU'RE asking ME, "WHY?"

Machiavelli
So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which
has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with
fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a
paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's
dominion maintained.

Hippocrates
Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Captain James T. Kirk
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Mr. Spock
It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time.

Colonel Harlan Sanders
It wasn't one of our chickens. They don't have to, because now KFC
delivers!

Jacques Derrida
Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act
of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally
valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because
structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Noam Chomsky
The chicken didn't exactly cross the road. As of 1994, something like
99.8% of all US chickens reaching maturity that year, had spent 82% of
their lives in confinement. The living conditions in most chicken
coops break every international law ever written, and some,
particularly the ones for chickens bound for slaughter, border on
inhumane. My point is, they had no chance to cross the road (unless
you count the ride to the supermarket). Even if one or two have
crossed roads for whatever reason, most never get a chance. Of course,
this is not what we are told. Instead, we see chickens happily dancing
around on Sesame Street and Foster Farms commercials where chickens
are not only crossing roads, but driving trucks (incidentally, Foster
Farms is owned by the same people who own the Foster Freeze chain, a
subsidiary of the dairy industry). Anyway, ...

Al Bundy
It was married... With children!

Marcy Jefferson
Why do you keep calling me a chicken?

Kelly Bundy
How do you spell chicken?

Thomas de Torquemada
Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary
Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it
take.

Walter Cronkite
That's the way it is.

Nietzsche
Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also
across you.

Oliver North
National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner
Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from
birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to
cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free
will.

Carl Jung
The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that
individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and
therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre
In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found
it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken"
and "road," and circumstances came into being which caused the
actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein
Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken
depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle
To actualize its potential.

Buddha
If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Howard Cosell
It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace
the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the
temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated
to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali
The Fish.

Monty Python
The Larch.

Douglas Adams
Forty-two.

Darwin
It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson
Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus
For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann Friedrich von Goethe
The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway
To die. In the rain.

Craig Crossman, host of Computer America
To lay hundreds, even thousands, of eggs.

Werner Heisenberg
We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was
moving very fast.

David Hume
Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in
dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Jack Nicholson
'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic
What road?

President Ronald Reagan
Ask Mommy. I forget.

John Sununu
The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so
quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx
You tell me.

Henry David Thoreau
To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Senator Edward Moore "Teddy" Kennedy
I panicked.

Katherine McKinnon
Because, in this patriarchial state, for the last four centuries, men
have applied their principles of justice in determining how chickens
should be cared for, their language has demeaned the identity of the
chicken, their technonogy and trucks have decided how and where
chickens will be distributed, their science has become the basis for
what chickens eat, their sense of humor has provided the framework for
this joke, their art and film have given us our perception of chicken
life, their lust for flesh has has made the chicken the most consumned
animal in the US, and their legal system has left the chicken with no
other recourse.

Stephen Jay Gould
It is possible that there is a sociobiological explanation for it, but
we have been deluged in recent years with sociobiological stories
despite the fact that we have little direct evidence about the
genetics of behavior, and we do not know how to obtain it for the
specific behaviors that figure most prominently in sociobiological
speculation.

Joseph Stalin
I don't care. Catch it. I need its eggs to make my omlette.

Malcolm X
It was coming home to roost.

Louis Farrakkan
It wasn't one chicken, you lying white devils! It was TEN MILLION
chickens!

Dr. Emmett Brown
Road? Where we're going we don't need roads!

Technical Writer David H. Citron the author of this page
Why do you expect ME to know the answer to this? Who cares? I don't
follow celebrity gossip. Why are so many people so concerned about
what celebrities and jocks do -- and so uninterested in the really
important news, about what the crooks and incompetents do in
Washington, the state capital, and the county courthouse? Blah, blah,
blah...

Mark Twain
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

The above quotes are taken from the page
http://www.univox.com/writer/chicken.html

Check this funny one too on chicken
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~smann/Humor/chicken.html

Enjoy.

netcrazy
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
From: pinkfreud-ga on 02 Jul 2002 13:15 PDT
 
To get to http://theotherside.com ?

(Please excuse my "tongue-in-beak" answer, but $3.00 is a poultry sum,
and good researchers should not have to work for chickenfeed.)
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
From: justaskscott-ga on 03 Jul 2002 21:14 PDT
 
The view of a thief in the David Mamet film Heist:
"You know why the chicken crossed the road?  Because the road crossed
the chicken."

"Caper Crime Film Abounds With 'Verbal Riffs,'" by Matt Wolf,
Associated Press Writer (Nov. 22, 2001)
Canarsie Courier
http://www.canarsiecourier.com/News/2001/1122/Arts_Entertainment/001.html

Now that's a double-cross! (lol) ;-)
Subject: Re: Domestic Avian Behaviour
From: cobrien-ga on 04 Jul 2002 03:31 PDT
 
I'll have to go with the old childhood anser to this: To get to the other side. 

alternatively: 
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To prove to the possum it could actually be done!
Subject: why did the chicken cross the road?
From: raxis-ga on 26 Sep 2004 07:29 PDT
 
the question and its most common answer of "to get to the other side"
are usually considered a joke. But you can also take it deeply and
seriously.

It can be coupled with the question "if a tree falls down and nobody
is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" and other such questions
that force us to explore our understanding of the universe to a
further extent that what we have simply come to accept and take for
granted.

If we take into account the common answer, with the question, when
looking at this question seriously, it could be that the question is
not a question but a statement, telling us something.

Alltogether, taking this question seriously, it raises simply more
questions that force our minds into tangents to seek answers which
simply raise even more questions.

I personally believe that the chicken crossed the road because there
was nothing better to do (including nothing) and you should all ask
yourselves if you have anything better to do than to search google for
the reason that the chicken crossed the road :P

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