Loud birds, true stories

A backyard notebook of small, true and slightly silly facts about roosters. One fact at a time, no hurry.

1. They keep their own clock. Roosters crow ahead of dawn even in constant dim light: the timing comes from an internal circadian clock, not only from the sunrise.
2. The boss crows first. In a flock, the top-ranking rooster starts the morning chorus, and the others politely wait their turn.
3. Built-in ear protection. A crow can top 100 decibels right at the bird's head. While crowing, a rooster's ear canal partly closes, which spares its own hearing.
4. Dinosaur relatives. Birds are living dinosaurs. When scientists compared protein fragments from a Tyrannosaurus rex bone, the closest matches were chickens and ostriches.
5. Gentleman's dinner call. A rooster that finds food makes a special call and picks up and drops the morsel over and over — "tidbitting" — to show the hens.
6. Two kinds of alarm. Roosters use different warning calls for a hawk overhead and for a fox on the ground, and hens react to each one differently.
7. The comb is a radiator. The red comb and wattles carry lots of blood vessels and help the bird shed heat on hot days.
8. Wild ancestors. Every farmyard rooster descends from the red junglefowl, a wild bird of the forests of Southeast Asia.
9. Spurs included. Mature roosters grow sharp spurs on the backs of their legs and use them in scuffles with rivals.
10. A national mascot. The Gallic rooster is a symbol of France; the Latin gallus means both "rooster" and "a Gaul".
11. Outnumbered. There are roughly three chickens alive for every person on Earth.
12. Not needed for breakfast. Hens lay eggs without any rooster around. A rooster is only needed if you want chicks.