Employees at Brittany’s Le Gros Chêne agricultural school in France were amazed by a curious event the other day. They found a dead fox in the chicken coop. The little devil had been wise enough to sneak in between the automatic doors when they closed the lights but not wise enough to realise there was a greeting party of 6,000 gallus gallus domesticus (hens!) lying in wait. Oops. Yes, just as their prehistoric ancestors might have done, these modern-day dinosaurs pecked the poor hungry fox to death. They behaved with a herd instinct and attacked it with their beaks, explained Pascal Daniel, the school’s director.

Even if it’s rare, farmers around the school were not surprised by this episode. According to Daniel, there is a power structure among chickens that sees the most aggressive ones in charge of guarding, warning and even guiding fellow hens to a safer place in case of danger. However, that’s not what happened here. No, here the brood did not retreat; instead, they fought together as one in order to get rid of a threat. Who would have thought that these innocent-looking birds could turn into veritable killing machines once unified against a common enemy? Not so innocent, after all. Maybe we need to do the same to protect us from the cheats and swindlers surrounding us…?