Why do people question a chicken crossing the road?

because that chicken would kill you and everyone you love if it got the chance.

I think it’s good to question everything, so why not?

I think it’s because if you spend time around chickens, you know that they have almost no faculty of intentionality, even down to going outside or inside when you open the door for them. Their instincts are very rudimentary. Chicks don’t even realize they can drink when you get them home and give them water (bringing them back from the chicken people for even an hour in your truck dehydrates them completely. You literally have to stick their little heads in a cup of water, and then they get it). So I would guess the joke started out as a sardonic point about why anyone does anything at all, like a way of replying to “Why do you stay with that woman?”

Why shouldn’t we question a chicken crossing a road?

Maybe we’re just being human, wanting to know everything.

Never trust that chicken, it’s too clever for it’s own good!

Perhaps people also question the chickens who are not crossing the road.

Because we are hard-wired to look for explanations for everything, and so we are driven to plumb the mysteries of chickens, as well as of everything else that crosses the road and does not cross the road.

Why is there a road?

Question everything.

Why? Chicken thigh!