Fear of Chickens
Alektorophobia
Alektorophobia is a fear of chickens, and the case report describing an eighteen-year-old woman treated for it states that no such case had been described in the literature before. That was published in 2017.
What the only case report says
The report is short and its claim is specific: alektorophobia is the term for a phobia of hens or chickens, the patient was an eighteen-year-old woman, she was treated successfully with graded exposure therapy, and to the authors' knowledge the condition had not been described in the extant literature.
That is an unusual sentence to be able to write about a bird that most of the world lives alongside. Chickens outnumber every other bird on earth by a wide margin, they are kept in yards across every inhabited continent, and until 2017 nobody had published an account of somebody frightened of one.
The paper places the case against the general figures. Specific phobia is found in around 16 per cent of thirteen to seventeen year olds worldwide, and in India specific phobia is among the commonest disorders in the school-going age group at roughly 4.2 per cent. Neither figure says anything about chickens.
Why the reference points away from chickens
The 2008 encyclopedia gives the definition and then relates it outward rather than inward: the fear may be connected to something wider:
- a fear of feathers
- a fear of winged creatures
- a fear of flying animals and birds
Every one of those three is a category the chicken sits inside rather than a property of the chicken. What the entry is proposing, without saying so, is that the fear is not really about hens: it is ornithophobia or pteronophobia meeting the bird that people actually encounter.
That is testable in principle and untested in fact. A person frightened of a hen and untroubled by a pigeon would settle it, and nothing in the sources reports either way.
Why Wikipedia has no alektorophobia article
The title alektorophobia on Wikipedia is a redirect rather than an article. Its talk page carries the notice that a redirect does not require a rating, and it is filed under two projects, Psychology and Birds, which have each rated it low importance.
That is the encyclopedic footprint of the fear in full: no article, two low-importance ratings, and a redirect to somewhere more general.
What the word means
The Greek alektor is a cock, the male bird, which makes the name narrower than its usual gloss. Alektorophobia is literally the fear of the rooster rather than of chickens as a species, and the case that exists concerns hens.
The mismatch is small and it is the ordinary condition of this vocabulary: a Greek noun selected for the sound of the compound rather than for the accuracy of the object.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Chickens
- Fear of BirdsThe reference entry relates this fear to the fear of winged creatures and of birds generally, which suggests the chicken is the bird a person is most likely to meet rather than the object of the fear.
- Fear of FeathersPteronophobia is named in the 2008 encyclopedia as a related fear, and its own case report describes a woman who avoided a backyard containing turkeys, pigeons, ducks and chickens while not fearing the birds themselves.
- Fear of FoodThe chicken is also the commonest meat, and no source relates the fear of the living bird to any reluctance about the cooked one.
Common questions
Questions about Alektorophobia
- Has anybody been described with it?
- Once. A report published in 2017 describes an eighteen-year-old woman in India treated successfully with graded exposure therapy, and states that to the authors' knowledge the condition had not been described in the extant literature before. Chickens outnumber every other bird on earth, and that is the first published account of somebody frightened of one.
- Is it really a fear of chickens?
- The 2008 encyclopedia suggests not. It relates the fear to fear of feathers, of winged creatures and of birds generally, all of which are categories the chicken belongs to rather than properties of the chicken. On that reading the hen is the bird people encounter rather than the thing they fear.
- What does the name literally mean?
- Fear of the rooster. Alektor is the male bird specifically, so the Greek is narrower than the usual gloss, and the single published case concerns hens. Selecting a noun for the sound of the compound rather than the accuracy of the object is the ordinary condition of this vocabulary.
- Does Wikipedia have an article on it?
- No, only a redirect. Its talk page notes that a redirect does not require a rating, and the projects for Psychology and for Birds have each rated it low importance. That is the whole encyclopedic footprint.
Added 2026-08-24 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of BirdsBirds cannot be avoided, so this fear ends in closed windows and car-only travel. The reference that classifies it also states that nobody has counted it.
- Fear of FeathersWiktionary failed the word for want of citations in 2010, and a Nigerian psychiatry journal published the first case report under the name in 2022.
- Fear of FoodAnorexia is a fear of gaining weight, not of food. The two produce identical plates and identical weight loss, and the treatments point in opposite directions.
- Fear of AnimalsWhat predicts fear of an animal is perceiving it as dangerous, disgusting and uncontrollable. Whether anything ever happened to the person does not.
- Fear of AntsBoth forms of this fear take the colony as their object, not the insect. The only study attached to the word tested clips from the Ant-Man films.
- Fear of BatsThe paper carrying the word in its title argues the fear is too narrow: almost entirely about rabies, when the list of bat-borne viruses runs to several dozen.