About a cock and chicks

Yesterday my family was torn by debate. We got stuck in an endless string of confusion after my brother stated: "I get tired of those crowing chickens at my appartment...". On which my mum replied "Chickens don't crow, cocks crow". I immediately stepped in to support my brother stating: "cocks are chickens".

Of course nobody believed me... nobody believes me *ever* ;) So today at the office during a moment of workpeace I fired from nowhere the question: "Is a cock a chicken?" Now lo and behold, the same raging discussion started all over. I personally believe that the question is therefor cursed. It is even worse than the question "What came first, the chicken or the egg?". Eventually we called in a specialist. The girlfriend of a colleague teaches courses in 'animal care' at a college for agriculture. She patiently explained that: a cock is a chicken like a tomcat is a cat, a boar is a pig and a bull is a cow. Funnily a cow is also a cow. To make matters worse the dutch male pig (and I am not talking about the average soccer fan here) is "beer" meaning "bear", so following this logic a pig can be a 'beer' but of course a 'bear' is not a pig. My brother and I did drink a certain amount of beer before we cocked up this discussion - pun intended.

Along the line of thought that: "if it's on the internet it must be true" I googled the question "Is a cock a chicken?" in dutch. The first hit was my reliable friend wikipedia, which got - for just this memorable occasion - transformed to "the must trustworthy source of information on the planet". The dutch article explained: A cock is a male chicken; the female chicken is a hen. The behaviour and appearance of a cock differs greatly from the hen.

As such I think I won... *dances* ;)