There are things we do for the sake of science and sometimes it’s not as scientific as it looks. Imagine attaching man-made dinosaur tails to four chickens and expecting them not to notice.
However, that’s exactly what happened. With the bodily similarities that chickens have with the Tyrannosaurus rex as it stands on both feet and stand erect, it was palatable to believe that with a few calibrated tweaks, researchers will be able to understand the mobility of the ancient creatures.
Through the years, chickens have evolved in terms of its mass. Their frontal area has gained weight, thereby shifting their mass to their breasts. This has caused problems to arise in their attempt at understanding the refined nuances of the Tyrannosaurus rex locomotion. The challenge prompted scientists to improvise: they strapped a plunger to the butts of four unknowing chickens using a Velcro strap.
“We attached more realistic artificial tails to chickens shortly after hatching and allowing proper exercise,” Bruno Gossi, lead author of the study from the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, University of Chile, wrote in the report. “We expected adult chicken with added tails to show a more vertical femur in standing position and increased femoral excursion during locomotion.”
Two days after the chickens hatched, they were tethered to a prosthetic tail made from clay and wood. The subjects are supposed to bear the extra 15 percent of weight that the tail accounted for in the next 12 weeks. The researchers recorded the study and made the video available online.
The study produced results they were aiming for. “We have shown that the addition of an artificial tail during ontogeny can produce postural and locomotory changes in chickens, consistent with the posture and kinematic inferred for non-avian dinosaurs.”
Further studies were encouraged to use the same mechanism of adding plunger tails on chickens. They have admitted that the study was not perfect due to the weight incompatibilities, among other things. It would have been a more ideal variable if they cut some of the chicken’s breast but that wasn’t experimentally possible.
The study was published in the Feb. 5 issue of PLOS One.
