Bizarre: woman thinks she is a chicken

A 54-year-old Belgian woman was taken to the hospital in Leuven by her brother because she suddenly became very unwell: she flapped her arms, puffed out her cheeks, and clucked, cackled and crowed. The psychiatrists’ conclusion: the woman thought she was a chicken. What?

Apparently, it is a rare mental disorder called zoanthropy, in which people believe they are an animal. Medical literature also contains cases of people who thought they were a crocodile, a desert rat or a bee. Fortunately, it does not occur often: between 1850 and 2012, only 56 cases were described. Unfortunately, it is not so easy for doctors to talk to people about their delusion: sometimes they can only grunt, bark or, like this woman, cluck.

Forgotten to roost

The woman told the doctors, in between clucking and crowing, that she felt she was a chicken and that someone had forgotten to put her on the roost. Her brother had found her in the garden, where she was clucking and scratching around. Further examination showed that she had not turned into a chicken from one moment to the next: she had not slept for several nights, felt depressed and had lost her appetite. She had previously been given medication to help with her depression. Because she was sleeping badly, her GP had prescribed sleeping pills. One day after she started taking these pills, she changed – in her mind – into a chicken.

A few hours of sleep, feeling better

Normally, zoanthropy is treated with antidepressants or antipsychotics, along with additional therapy. But in this case, things turned out differently. In the emergency department, the chicken woman had an epileptic seizure. Doctors kept her asleep for a few hours, and when she woke up, she felt much better. She was responsive again, and sometime during her sleep she had lost the idea that she was a chicken.

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• One chicken, three meals: smart, quick and sustainable
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Source: Tijdschrift voor Psychiatrie