Why did the chicken cross the road?" is a common riddle joke, with the answer being "to get to the other side". It is an example of anti-humour, in that the curious setup of the joke leads the listener to expect a traditional punchline, but they are instead given a simple statement of fact. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" has become iconic as an exemplary generic joke to which most people know the answer, and has been repeated and changed numerous times over the course of history.
Alternatively, the punchline can be regarded as the chicken "getting to the other side" as a euphemism for death, and crossing the road being its method of suicideTo get to the other slide.
Alternatives:
She wanted to stretch her legs.
She was afraid someone would Caesar!
To prove to the possum/hedgehog it could actually be done!
To avoid lame and outdated jokes
Because it wanted to find out what those jokes were about.
Scientists answer:
Albert Einstein: The chicken did not cross the road. The road passed beneath the chicken.
Isaac Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross roads.
Carl Sagan: There are billions and billions of such chickens, crossing roads just like this one, all across the universe.
Jean-Dernard-Leon Foucault: What’s interesting is that if you wait a few hours, it will be crossing the road a few inches back that way.
Robert Van de Graaf: Hey, doesn’t it look funny with all its feathers sticking up like that?
Blaise Pascal: The chicken felt pressure on this side of the road. However, when it arrived on the other side it still felt the same pressure.
Henri Poincare: Let’s try changing the initial position of the chicken just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit, and….look, it’s now across the road!
Enrico Fermi: In estimating to the nearest power of 10 the number of chickens that cross the road, note that since fractional chickens are not allowed, the desired power must be at least zero. Therefore, at least one chicken crosses the road.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
Richard Feynman, 1: It’s all quite clear from this simple little diagram of a circle with lines poking out of it.
Richard Feynman, 2: There was this good-looking rooster on the other side of the road, and he figured he’d skip all the games and just get to the point. So he asked the chicken if she’d like to come over to his side, and she said sure.
Erwin Schrodinger: The chicken doesn’t cross the road. Rather, it exists simultaneously on both sides ….. just don’t peek.
Henry Cavendish: My dear chicken, I have calculated with the utmost detail and precision the density of your insides. Now, for the sake of my precious sanity, I beg you, stop that incessant clucking and be gone!
Hans Geiger: I don’t know, but I say we count how many times it crosses!
Galileo Galilei: The chicken crossed the road because it put one foot in front of the other and took a sufficient number of steps to traverse a distance greater than or equal to the road’s width. Note that the reason is not because the earth is the center of the universe. Oh, great … another jail term.
Peter Higgs: We must first find the chicken.
Nicolaus Copernicus: The chicken was moving at a slightly different orbital speed around the sun.
Fusion researchers: Because it knew that in 30 years it would get to the other side.]
Charles Darwin It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Johannes Kepler: I don't know. But I'm glad it did, because as it waddled across, it was kind enough to sweep the area of the road with its wings. And it did so at an astonishingly consistent rate.
Robert Hooke: At first, the chicken was drawn across the road. But after passing the middle, it felt an increasing desire to return to the original side. It did end up making it to the other side (just barely), but then decided to return. I believe it is still going back and forth on this.
Pierre de Fermat: Forget about why. I’ll show you how it can get there in the least amount of time.
Neils Bohr: In attempting to answer the question by observing the chicken, I collapsed its wavefunction to the other side.
Michael Faraday: No, again? How many times do I have to tell it to stick to the safety of its cage?!
Max Planck: It appears to be a white chicken. Sorry, I deal only with black bodies.
Sir William Hamilton: With regard to the issue of crossing the road, the chicken made it to the other side by taking as little action as possible.
Archimedes: I was running through the streets yelling and screaming, and it was only afterward that I realized I was carrying a chicken.
Amadeo Avogadro: What, just one? I deal only with very large chicken numbers.
Ptolemy: Someone will probably think of a simpler explanation in a few thousand years, but the present understanding is that the chicken crosses the road because it is constrained to move on this here sphere, which in turn has its center on this one over here. The end result is that, except in the rare case of retrograde chicken motion, the chicken does indeed cross the road.
Marie Curie: Good question. And one that is much less hazardous to one’s health.
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss: Draw a pillbox around the road, and consider the flux of chickens through the box. If a chicken leaves this side of the road, then assuming that there are no chicken sinks or sources, it must end up on the other side.
James Clerk Maxwell: Ok, Miss Chicken, let’s figure this out together. Hold out your right foot…. yes, that’s it …. good …. now curl your talons …. right…. now look at your…. hold on – you don’t have any thumbs!
Christian Doppler: It always sounds a bit down when it’s heading over there, but rather upbeat when it’s coming back.
Edwin Hubble: Strange, it seems to move faster the farther away it gets.
Ernest Rutherford: The differential cross section for forward chicken scattering is quite large, so the chicken will most likely cross the road if it was initially heading in that direction.
Stephen Hawking: Chicken fluctuations will inevitably create a scenario where a chicken ends up on the other side of the yellow line, in which case there is a nonzero probability that it will escape to the other side.
Lord Kelvin: I don’t know. But I think the road actually starts back there a bit.
Robert Oppenheimer: Although it was deemed appropriate at the time, people will forever question whether it was correct for the chicken to cross the road.
Philosophers, writers, psychologists, etc, answer:
Aristotle To actualise its potential.
B.F. Skinner Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Buddha If you meet the chicken on the road, kill it.
Carl Jung The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
David Hume Out of custom and habit.
Douglas Adams Forty-two.
Emily Dickinson Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus For fun.
Ernest Hemingway To die. In the rain.
Henry David Thoreau To live deliberately… and suck all the marrow out of life.
Hippocrates Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jack Nicholson ‘Cause it [censored] wanted to. That’s the [censored] reason.
Jacques Derrida Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Jean-Paul Sartre In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
J.F. von Goethe The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Karl Marx It was a historical inevitability.
Ludwig Wittgenstein The possibility of “crossing” was encoded into the objects “chicken” and “road”, and circumstances came into being which caused the actualisation of this potential occurrence.
Machiavelli So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken’s dominion maintained.
Mark Twain The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Nietzsche Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Plato For the greater good.
Pyrrho the Skeptic What road?
Ralph Waldo Emerson It didn’t cross the road; it transcended it.
Salvador Dali The Fish.
The Sphinx You tell me.
Thomas de Torquemada Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.
Timothy Leary Because that’s the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Zeno of Elea To prove it could never reach the other side.
American Politicians etc answer
DONALD TRUMP: We will build a big wall to keep illegal chickens from crossing the road. We will have a door for legal chickens.
JOHN KERRY: We will trust the chicken to tell us whether it crossed the road or not.
CHRIS CHRISTIE: We need to waterboard that chicken to find out why it crossed the road.
NANCY PELOSI: We will have to wait until the chicken crosses the road to see what it says.
BEN CARSON: This isn't brain surgery. So why did the chicken cross the road?
SARAH PALIN: The chicken crossed the road because, gosh-darn it, he's a maverick!
BARACK OBAMA: Let me be perfectly clear, if the chickens like their eggs they can keep their eggs. No chicken will be required to cross the road to surrender her eggs. Period.
HILLARY CLINTON: What difference at this point does it make why the chicken crossed the road?
GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or against us. There is no middle ground here.
BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken.
AL GORE: I invented the chicken.
AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white?
OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross the road so badly. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a NEW CAR so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.
BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2018, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents and balance your checkbook.
JEREMY CORBYN: That is a very serious issue at the heart of agricultural and transport issues and not helped by PFI.
COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?
Football people
Bill Shankly: Some people think crossing the road is a matter of life and death - but I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.
Brian Clough: If I had an argument with the chicken we would sit down for twenty minutes, talk about it and then decide I was right.
David Beckham: That chicken is the best chicken I’ve seen at this level. Well, he’s the only chicken I’ve actually seen at this level, but he’s the best chicken I’ve seen.
Jose Mourinho: Please don’t call him arrogant, but he is a cross-road champion and he thinks he’s the special one.
Sir Alex Ferguson: His greatest challenge is not what’s happening at the moment, his greatest challenge was knocking the other chicken right off their (expletive) perch.
Arsene Wenger: I did not know anything about it. I didn’t see it.
Kevin Keegan: I’ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if the chicken crosses the road, love it.
Cristiano Ronaldo: Maybe they hate him because he’s too good.
Roy Keane: That chicken can rot in hell for all I care.
Andy Gray: The chicken, being female does not know the offside rule.
Rafael Benitez: I’m only interested in facts.
Diego Maradona: I’m not surprised by the chicken’s comments. He should return to the museum.
Gerard Houllier: You can’t say the chicken isn’t a winner. He has proved that by finishing fourth, third and second in the last three years.
Gary Lineker: Crossing the road is a simple game, 22 chickens chase each other for 90 minutes and at the end, the German chicken wins.
A chant at Anfield: We all dream of a team of chickens.
Ronaldo: The chicken lost because it didn’t cross.
Alan Hansen: You can’t win anything with chickens.
"Why did the duck cross the road?"
It was the chicken's day off
OR
To prove he's no chicken".
