I’ve been reading Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt. The author is dissecting the world of cannibalism in the animal kingdom, and stumbles upon a very peculiar solution to chicken cannibalism (because that’s a thing): chicken sunglasses.
Pecking Order Chaos: Aggressive Behavior in Poultry Farms
Apparently, due to the crowded conditions in poultry farms, stress levels rise due, and some chickens may resort to aggressive pecking. Things can get messy, and the birds can go as far as to peck their neighbors to death and consume them.
Rose-Tinted Solutions: The Tale of Anti-pix Sunglasses
The problem was so extended that in 1939, Joseph Haas and “the National Band and Tag Company came up with a far more painless and fashion conscious method to deal with the problem of cannibalistic chickens. Their design team reasoned that if the birds couldn’t see “raw flesh or blood” then they wouldn’t cannibalize each other and so they came up with “Anti-pix”—mini sunglasses equipped with red celluloid lenses and aluminum frames. Purchased in bulk ($27 for 1,000) and attached to the upper portion of the bird’s beak near the base, poultry farmers were informed that having their chickens see the world through rose-tinted glasses would “make a sissy of your toughest birds,” and apparently they worked.” according to Bill Schutt.
Collector’s Delight: The Unexpected Appeal of Chicken Sunglasses
As the National Band and Tag Company informs us in their post, these glasses are no longer sold and “are now considered to be a collectors’ item. Barry Weiss from Storage Wars found a few pairs of our Chicken Glasses in a storage unit and took them to a friend to see how they worked.“
Regardless of their gory backstory, this chicken looks really rad with those sunglasses.
