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Comment by Shenglong | Hacker News Reader

|Cow, hen, pig, sheep

The standard answer is supposed to be hen, as it is the only bird.

I believe the standard answer is a "hen" because it's the only one that is gender-specific. In fact, it is distinctly the odd-one out because it doesn't even refer to a specific genus (or even family) of animal.

I'm all for creativity (I have the same complaint often) but there needs to be some sort of standardization in communication and society. A genius who can't communicate any of his/her ideas might as well be no genius at all.

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> I believe the standard answer is a "hen" because it's the only one that is gender-specific.

What about cow?

Strangely, the first reaction I had was that a pig is the only thing that you need to kill to get something from. You can get milk, eggs, and wool from the other animals without killing them.

Not sure why I went in that direction, but I could imagine a lot of farmers and ranchers might think along similar lines.

Maybe you play too much Minecraft.

I believe the standard answer is a "hen" because it's the only one that is gender-specific.

Silly city-dweller! Cows are females.

Isn't that the point of the article? Everyone could pick one of those and reationalize why it should be the "standard" answer, but it doesn't mean it's the only right one. Good test would require candidate to pick an answer and then explain why, but that would make scoring such test too subjective.

I'd be inclined to answer sheep. It is the only term that can be used in a plural context.

As DanWaterworth noted, cow is gender specific and does not even refer to a specific genus either (see: Whales).

Cow is specifically female, so it's not that. There are definitely a few different ways of cutting it, I went for sheep. It's a silly "test" of anything if it has a "correct" answer.

~~Sheep / ram?~~

Cow / bull?

~~Sow / uh, pig ? (I don't know about pig)~~

Hen / cock?

(Pseudo strikethrough! See child comment from pbiggar.)

I believe its Ewe / ram Sow / boar

Boar is a male pig. Male sheep names depend on if it got snipped (ram is for "intact" males).

// answers correspond to growing up in ND

For me the obvious answer is that it has 2 legs :) But if I cannot convince you I am right, my awesome intelligence is all in vain.

'pig' can be written in a way such that it has a symmetry about a vertical line, so I'd go with it.

Scott Kim can make any of them symmetrical in multiple ways - that's not a distinguishing feature.

I've seen a few comments on HN and the blog about this question -- I think it's important to note that the article mentions this question was a set of pictures:

>>One test had many rows of small pictures, and I had to choose the odd one out in each row.

So the arguments about the number of letters, the order of the letter, etc wouldn't make sense here.

I would have thought hen because the other three are mammals.

It cannot be that. Alligators and crocodiles also use the term cow and are not mammals.

it is distinctly the odd-one out because it doesn't even refer to a specific genus

Cow can refer to female elephants as well

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