Aircraft may share the sky with birds, for the most part, without issue, but the occasional collision can’t entirely be avoided, which can have dramatic consequences for both parties! In order to test the resilience of early aircraft, humans invented a formidable piece of testing kit – the chicken cannon. As the name might suggest, it fires out frozen chickens at high speed towards the most vulnerable parts of an aircraft (windscreen, turbine engines, etc.). Many chickens have given their lives to science in this way, although gelatine blocks are increasingly used nowadays, which are a good imitation of the density of a bird, but not quite so messy.