My wife is an inveterate researcher. She hears about something and then can’t stop herself from heading head down down the rabbit hole. This morning it was broody hens. Huh? Why? Because she immediately had a suspicion that the phenomenon isn’t confined to chickens. And the more she got into the details, the more the parallels proliferated. Those parallels are too detailed for my modest penmanship, so I’ve asked her to write a guest post. It’s forthcoming.

But in the meantime, what made me sit up and take notice is how the frequency of the broody hen in the general chicken population is regulated a) in the wild and b) on the farm, and how these two mechanisms – the (a) being natural selection, the (b) being economic exigencies – are replicated in university administrations. What?! No, nuff said, at least for now. Except to say my respect for my wife’s intellect is matched only by my fear of it.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Humour, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: broody hens, chickens, economics, natural selection, university administration