Chicken defense

Science World, April 18, 2003

Marines stationed in Kuwait recently purchased 43 chickens--and not for a barbecue. The live chickens were to serve as a low-tech chemical detection system, like the canaries coalminers once used to detect poisonous gases underground. "While chickens have lungs like we do, they also have something called air sacks," says bird specialist Ian Tizard at Texas A&M University.

"If something really nasty is in the air, it would kill a chicken faster than it would a human." Sadly, all but two of the marines' chickens have already died--from illness, not chemical weapons. Should Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken (KFC) be scrapped?