Cow-human hybridsMammalian Hybrids Theseus slaying the Minotaur (Master of the Campana Cassoni, 16t century)
EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD Genetics
Google+ Profile
Caution: Some readers may find the information on this page disturbing.
The Minotaur, of course, is a human-bull hybrid, which nearly everyone, at least in Western society, has both heard of and dismissed as myth. But is it possible that such hybrids, on rare occasion, actually are produced? Beyond a recent alleged birth of this type reported from Thailand, and the widespread belief in Japan that cow-human hybrids actually do occur at the present day, there are perhaps two dozen separate instances of this cross documented below on this webpage. Some cases seem fairly well attested, in particular the following, which appeared in a medical journal. In 1827, an article describing an allegedly real human-cow hybrid, born alive, appeared in the May-June issue of Magazin der ausländischen Literatur der gesammten Heilkunde (Schreter 1827, pp. 487-489). The Magazin, published by two Hamburg physicians, Nikolaus Heinrich Julius (1783-1862) and Georg Hartog Gerson (1788-1844), was a German medical periodical anthologizing foreign literature of interest to doctors. The following is the complete article, quoted in translation, originally given in German by Dr. David Schreter, an Austro-Hungarian general practitioner who claims to have examined the specimen himself (transcript of the original German article; Lea una traducción en Español, Lisez une traduction française). The translated title of the article is “A Description of a Monstrous Creature Birthed by a Cow in the Town of Wagendrüssel in the Hungarian County of Zipser.”
On the 14th of March, 1825, Benjamin Münich, a resident of the mountain town of Wagendrüssel [present-day Nálepkovo in Slovakia], bought — at least so he claims — a pregnant cow from a certain Johann Krall of Stellbach. On the 25th of the following month, in the afternoon, the beast was having difficulty giving birth and both the owner and his wife were assisting. They were appalled when, instead of a normal calf, they were confronted with a monstrous birth, which they at once put it to death. This strange animal was stuffed by a local businessman, and it was also painted by an artist, Johann Müller from the nearby town of Leutschau [now Levoča in Slovakia]. Eight or ten days passed before the authorities there in Zipser launched a legal inquiry into the matter. This deformed creature has a crown-rump length of three feet [~90cm] and, when placed upon its feet, is about two feet tall. The head is large, and looks quite similar to a human being’s. From the superior portion of the frontal bone across the face to the chin, it measures ten inches [~25cm]. The frontal and parietal bones define a fontanelle like that in the skull of an ordinary human infant. The sagittal suture is one inch long. On its head, from the fontanelle back, it has one-inch-long golden brown hair. On both sides the ears are rather small and human-like, but their lobes end in three-inch-long calf ears covered with sparse hair at their tips. The face is smooth and hairless, the eyes a beautiful blue, and the eyebrows a dark brown. The tip of the nose is flattened, with the nostrils distanced from each other by a septum thicker than that seen in human beings. The upper jaw, which lacks teeth, bears an upper lip like a human’s; the lower has ten thin, sharp teeth, and is more similar to a calf’s. On the chest are two rounded breasts with well-formed, projecting nipples 2.5 inches in circumference. These mammae are elevated somewhat (about half an inch) above the surrounding surface, as in a young woman. The torso and buttocks are like those of a human being, but the body is longer in proportion to the extremities. There is a naked eight-inch tail, about half an inch in diameter. The genitalia are female. Between the hind legs is an udder, and some of the umbilical cord remains attached. The upper portion of each of the four extremities is naked, as is the general surface of the torso, but the lower portions are covered with glossy brown hair. Each leg ends in a cloven hoof like that of a cow. The fact that the birth of this creature actually took place is witnessed by the entire municipal authority of Wagendrüssel and nearly all of the inhabitants of the town, as well as by the members of the committee set up by the County of Zipser to investigate the matter. David Schreter, M.D., general practioner at Leutschau. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Transcript of the original German article.] So the hybrid described by Schreter differs from the Minotaur of Greek myth, in having a human head and body, but the tail and legs of a cow. Most accounts of the Cretan Minotaur give him the head of a bull. The hybrid just described is generally more similar to a Mesopotamian lamassu (see the lower image at right above).
Another nineteenth century was reported in newspapers in the summer of 1899. The following is from an Australian paper, the Northern Star (Lismore, New South Wales), and appeared in column 2, page 6, of the Wednesday 9 August 1899 issue (access original). However, the same story ran in many other British Empire newspapers. The event supposedly happened in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.
A Calf With a Human Face. An Agra correspondent of the ‘Madras Mail,’ writing recently, remarks : “An extraordinary freak of nature was brought to light at Sultanpur, one of the suburban villages of Agra Contonmont, situated not quite a mile from the Contonment Church, and on the outskirts of what is known as Pensioners’ Lines. A cow, it was said, had given birth on the previous day to a wonderful calf, which survived only a few hours, the head of which resembled that of a human being, while the rest of the body was that of any ordinary calf.” A correspondent of the paper immediately proceeded to the spot, and says: “When I got there I found an immense concourse of people gathered inside, outside, and round about a Gwala’s hut.” With some difficulty I managed to make headway through the crowd, and at length got to the ‘sacred’ spot. There I found what at first appeared to me to be an ordinary dead calf, but on closer inspection I found that it was one of the most extraordinary calves I had ever seen. The lower portion of the body from the neck downwards was perfectly symmetrical and natural, but the head in every respect was that of an overgrown babe, say about 8 months old. There was the short round face in the place of the long-pointed snout, the ears small, and fixed flatly in the head, instead of protruding out—in fact, a perfect human face. Hindus of all castes, from the sacerdotal Brahmin to the low caste Chamar, were all there to do reverence, as they told me, to this more than sacred cow. Some of the better class of men among the crowd told me that they attach a great deal of importance to this extraordinary phenomenon of nature, as being prophetic of some marvellous development of an abnormal event that will occur in the history of this country at no distant date. So much for idle superstition of uncultured minds. “What they mean to do with the carcass I do not know, my offer to purchase it being positively declined.”
Another such birth, which supposedly occurred the previous year, was reported from Gadsden, a small town in western Tennesee. The following is a screenshot of a brief article appearing on page 2 (col. 3) of the Savannah Courier, Savannah, Tennessee, on Mar. 25, 1898. (Access original) The source of the story was the Alamo Signal, a newspaper published in Alamo, Tennessee, a town near Gadsden.
There were at least three similar cases reported in the eighteenth century. Thus, in the June 1752 issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine, there is an account, “Extract of a Letter from a Clergyman at Clayworth in Nottinghamshire” (Anonymous 1752), of a second human-cow hybrid. The name of the clergyman in question is not specified, but given the small size of the parish of Clayworth, he would almost certainly have been the Rev. James Carrington, who was at that time Rector of Clayworth (see biographical data at right). The following is the extracted text from his letter: “I should have wrote sooner but that I wanted to be satisfy’d in the truth of a report of a monstrous production in a neighbouring village. The animal in question
is the offspring of a cow, is about the size of a child of 10 years old, and formed in all respects like a human creature, except the ears and hoofs, the latter of which are cloven, and the ears resembling a calf’s, are covered with a kind of down. But no hair appears in any part, except for about three inches above the hoof on each foot or hand, (which you will please to call it) and on the upper lip, like a Spanish mustacho. The face is much like that of an old man, the chest perfectly resembles that of a woman, to which sex ‘tis said that it has also a very distinguishing analogy [in the 18th century, one of the senses of the word analogy was “similarity”; so this seems to be Carrington’s euphemistic approach to saying this hybrid was female]; but I was not very curious in that part of the scrutiny; the skin is soft, smooth and of a complexion at least equal to a French foot soldier after a summer’s campaign.
Carrington’s description has certain interesting parallels with that given above by Schreter. Again, the mother is a cow (as is usually the case in such reports). The animal is again mostly naked, with the exception of hair on the lower part of its legs above the hooves, and again it has breasts like a woman. Carrington seems to make no definite statement as to whether the creature was born alive.
Another case from this period is recorded in Jean-Ferapie Dufieu’s Traité de physiologie (Lyon, 1763, vol I, pp. 228-229) in which the author, a French physician, describes an “infant” baptized in Lyon. Thus, he writes that “on the 20th of January, 1759, the vicar of Saint-Nizier in Lyon baptized an infant who had features like those of a cow. The lower portion of the face was human and the upper a mixture of cow and man. He had a nose more like that of a cow than a human being’s and his skin was covered with hair from the upper part of the small of the back upward over the top of his head as far as the upper border of his cow-like nose. The priest had to lift this shaggy hair out of the way to baptize the infant. The ocular orbits were large but without eyes. The arms were mere stumps having only two digits [i.e., cloven hooves again]. This infant died the next day, the 21st, and was buried in the cemetery there at St. Nizier. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]
From church records, it appears that the name of this “infant” was François Marie Charton (access a screenshot of the baptismal record). Dufieu’s story is interesting because it is one of only three cases listed on this page in which the mother is supposed to be a woman, not a cow. (Presumably no one would have chosen to have this creature baptized in a church if it had been birthed by a cow.) The other two cases appear below. A third report from the eighteenth century appeared in a supplement to the July 1784 issue of Observations sur la Physique, l’Histoire naturelle et sur les Arts, a scholarly journal published by the botanist Jean-Baptiste François Rozier and his nephew, scientist and explorer Jean-André Mongez. In this case, the report includes an intaglio plate showing the specimen (see image at right below), but the head is considerably less like a human’s than in the other accounts, perhaps because this individual had undergone only seven months of development, whereas the other reports listed here seem all to refer either to the products of full-term pregnancies (in both cattle and humans the gestation period is approximately 280 days). It is also possible that development was simply aberrant in this case as it is in a certain fraction of the individuals produced by some hybrid crosses.
Still, in the individual pictured, the lower portion of face is quite similar to a human being’s, as is the cranial region. This illustration is the only one on this page that is, apparently, drawn by an artist with access to an actual specimen (except, perhaps, Martin Luther’s Monk-calf pictured below). The distribution of facial hair, as shown in the picture (which is similar to what in humans is called a Van Dyke) is of interest because it is consistent both with Carrington’s "mustacho" and with Fincelius’s use (below) of the German word bart ("beard"). The limitation of hair to the lower portions of the legs is also consistent with the descriptions of both Carrington and Schreter. At any rate, the following is a translation of Rozier and Mongez’s original report: On a Monstrous Calf born at Nemyriv. An important event for the study of natural history has taken place in [the village of] Nemyriv in the Ukraine. There, on September 23rd of this year [1783], a Jew slaughtered a cow in her seventh month of pregnancy. A male fetus of singular appearance was extracted alive, but died a few minutes later. The torso of this animal (Plate 2, July 1784 issue) is that of a naked calf with dark red skin. The hooves are unusually large, and the skin above the forehooves is covered with short light brown hair. The forehead and the scalp, which is completely bald, exactly ressemble those of a human being. But instead of a nose there is a kind of snout [i.e., a frontal proboscis, a structure that’s fairly common in ostensible pig-human hybrids], attached at its upper end to the forehead. It is soft, without bone or tendon, and three inches long by 1.5 inches in diameter. At the end of this snout, which is much like a small elephant trunk, is a one-third-inch-wide opening ringed by short hair. The eye openings are an inch long and lie below the base of the snout. The eyes are rather deeply embedded and their lids have lashes like those of a human being. On either side above the eyes are five long hairs that serve as eyebrows. The rest of the face is extremely similar to a human being’s. The cheeks are round and covered with a smooth skin. The upper lip is quite large and bears a thick curly mustache. The tip of the tongue is split to a depth of one-quarter inch. Instead of bone, the upper jaw is composed only of cartilage; the lower jaw has four incisors. The chin is rather large and covered with a bushy light brown beard. The creature is 26 1/4 inches long; its height at the shoulders is 12 1/2 inches; and it is 15 inches from the ends of the hind legs to the top of the spine. It weighs 23 1/2 pounds. By order of Count Vincent de Potoski, Grand Chamberlain of the King of Poland, this monster has been preserved in alcohol in a glass vase prepared especially for that purpose, and it is now in the court apothecary. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French]
Cow-human hybrids: Early accounts
The German physician Johann Schreyer (1655-1694), too, gives an account of a creature found in the White Elster River Weiße at the German town of Zeitz in 1681, which he says had the head of a human being, the body of a calf and the beard of a goat. He says he saw it himself. Stepping back a century, we find the writings of Joan Petri Klint (d. 1608), a Swedish clergyman and historian. In his book On Meteors (see note at right), Klint (translated in Rosen 1994) gives an account of a human-cow hybrid, which he claims was born in March 1588,
Near Örebro [Sweden] in the parish of Svensta, in a croft called Kalkaboda just outside Stenkulla, a cow gave birth to a calf with the appearance of a human head and human feet, but without forelegs. The calf seemed to be a half-man, half-calf. He had big eyes, stretched out his tongue and wanted to get at the people who were watching him; he rose bellowing and off he went, but was slain.
Jobus Fincelius (also known as Hiob Fincel), a sixteenth-century German humanist and physician was a professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Jena, he authored a two-volume work entitled Wunderzeichen in which he lists events he interpreted as miraculous signs (Fincelium 1566). Among them was a creature with human features supposedly birthed by a cow near Bamberg in northern Bavaria. The following is Fincelius’s account: “In the same year of 1556,
a calf was born in the village of Kleisdorf on the River Izt about three miles [north of] Bamberg. This dreadful creature was fat and had the hooves of an ordinary calf, but a large human head, a black beard, as well as ears and breasts like a human being’s. The torso, too, was like a human’s, but longer, and the naked tail was like a dog’s. This monstrous birth, which soon died, was calved on the property of a noblewoman there at Kleisdorf. Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original: “Im selben Jar 1556 ist den 24 Julii zu Kleistdorff an der Itz gelegen drey Meil von Bamberg diese schreckliche Geburt eines Kalbes geborn worden, welchs eines fetten Leibs gewest hat auch vier gewöhnliche Kalbsfüsse gehabt, aber einen grossen menschenkopff, eine schwarzenbart, zwey kleine Menschenörlin, eine Mensche brust, und einen langen menschenrücken, einen glattenschwanz wie ein hund, hat nit lang gelebt. Und ist in der Edelfrawen zu Kleisdorff forwerg geborn worde.”
So again, in this account the hybrid has a human-like head and torso, but cloven hooves and a tail. Also, as did Schreter and Carrington, Fincelius says the Kleisdorf birth had breasts like a woman’s. And in this case, as in the ones reported by Carrington and by Rozier and Mongez, the hybrid has facial hair around its mouth (though the style of beard shown in the illustration from Schenck is probably based purely on the artist’s imagination).
Another German hybrid of this type actually played an important role in the Reformation. Martin Luther claimed that a monstrous human-like calf born on Dec. 8, 1522, at the village of Waltersdorf near Freiberg (about 70 miles southeast of Luther’s Wittenberg) was a sign from God that the Catholic Church was corrupt. Catholics, in their turn, interpreted it as a sign that Luther was accursed by God. Pictured at right, this creature was, according to Aldrovandi (1642, p. 372), born of a woman. Supposedly, it had a deformed, but human-like head, stood upright, and on its shoulders, a cape-like flap of skin that Luther likened to a monk’s cowl. As did the specimens mentioned in the various reports above, it had hooves instead of hands and feet. Palfijn and Mauriceau (1708) report a birth that supposedly occurred in Germany in 1554: On a Pomeranian farm called Rossauw near Passelwalck [probably modern Pasewalk], a woman gave birth to a horrible monster; it had the body of a calf, but its naked head was round like a ball and much like that of an ape. Its chin was covered with coarse, prickly hair, and its tongue poked out. Its front feet lacked hooves, being like round balls; those behind were like cow hooves. Its tail had no joints, as if it were a single bone, and was thus completely inflexible. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French]
So here, again, a hairy chin is mentioned. Note, too, that the protruding tongue agrees with the picture of Luther’s Monk-calf shown at right above. The rudimentary development of the forelegs is reminiscent of the case described by Petri. Liceti (1665, p. 188) also mentions the Passelwalck birth, but gives the date as 1555. Caspar Peucer (1525-1602), a physician who married the daughter of Luther’s colleague Philipp Melanchthon, mentions a fourth German case, a creature supposedly found dead near the town of Bitterfeld in 1547. Bitterfeld, too, is close to Wittenberg (just 12 miles away). Peucer’s brief account (Peucer 1603, p. 728) reads as follows: In the year 1547, in the town of Bitterfeld, a calf was found in the fields with the crown of its skull red and shorn. Its eyes, nose and ears were those of a human being, but its mouth and chest those of a calf. The forelegs, too, were mainly like a calf’s, but the hind legs more like a human’s, though somewhat short. In both front and rear, each separate digit bore the hoof of a calf. Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin: “Anno 47 ad oppidu Bitterfeld vitulus in agro repertus oculis, naribus & auribus humanis, vertice tonso & miniato, rictu & pectore vitulino, cruribus anterioribus vitulinis posterioribus humanis & brevibus admodu, sed utriusque desinentibus, partim in vngulas vitulinas, partim in humanos digitos qui ungulis superabat, & separatim propendebant.”
Another, even earlier case has been reported. In his account of Ireland (Topographia Hibernica, 1188, § II, xxi), the Welsh chronicler Geraldus de Barri, known as Gerald of Wales (c. 1146 – c. 1223), relates the following story about a cow-human hybrid that, he claims, not only reached maturity, but even dined on a regular basis with Norman lords at Wicklow Castle (see also Expugnatio Hiberniae for the year 1176). Gerald gave his tale the title Of a Man Half Bull and a Bull Half Man: Near Wicklow, at the time when Maurice FitzGerald first gained lordship there was seen a human prodigy, if indeed it is correct to say “human.” For while the creature had a human body, his extremities were those of a cow. To the joints which normally connect the hands to the arms, and the feet to the calves, were instead attached the hooves of an ox. His head was bald, except for a few patches of down in place of ordinary hair. The eyes were large, cow-like in their roundness and color. The face below was flat — merely two nostrils, with no protruding nose. Speaking no words, he could only low. Long an attendant of Maurice’s court, he came every day to meals, and what he was given to eat, he gripped in the cleft of his hooves which served him as hands, and so conveyed it to his mouth. However, because the [English] nobles of the castle often mocked the Irish for getting such things on cattle, they at last, in their malice and spite, waylaid and killed him, which he little deserved. For shortly before the English arrived on that island [i.e., Ireland] a cow had birthed this man-calf in the mountains of Glendalough … Thus, you might well suppose that “a man half-bull and a bull half-man” had been created once again [here, Gerald refers to the Minotaur of ancient legend]. For almost a year he remained with the calves, following and nursing his mother. But at last, since he was more human than cow, he was brought over into human society. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin] Cow-human hybrids in myth and literature
Cow-human hybrids have been the subject of mythology and religious awe since the most ancient times. The best known example is that of the Minotaur of Greek legend. In that story Minos, the king of Crete and the husband of Pasiphae, prays for a white bull to sacrifice to Poseidon. But, as Apollodorus (Library and Epitome, 3.1.4) relates, Minos sent the bull to the herds and sacrificed another. But angry at him for not sacrificing the bull, Poseidon made the animal savage, and contrived that Pasiphae should conceive a passion for it. In her love for the bull she found an accomplice in Daedalus, an architect, who had been banished from Athens for murder. He constructed a wooden cow on wheels, took it, hollowed it out, sewed it up in the hide of a cow which he had skinned, and set it in the meadow where the bull was kept. Then he introduced Pasiphae into it; and the bull came and coupled with it, as if it were a real cow. And she gave birth to Asterius, who was called the Minotaur. He had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human; and Minos, in compliance with certain oracles, shut him up and guarded him in the Labyrinth.
There are other, earlier deities, such as the Egyptian Montu and Apis, as well as the Mesopotamian Enkidu, which were often represented as a blend of human and cow. The Temple of Montu at Medamud was first built during the Old Kingdom era, that is, in the third millenium B.C. Worship of Apis and Enkidu date back to at least an equally early date. And even today, the Devil is often represented in Christian publications as a kind of cow-human hybrid with horns, cloven hooves and a tail. A human-faced cow, the Chichevache, appears also in The Canterbury Tales. According to Chaucer, it fed only on obedient and faithful wives and was therefore perpetually gaunt with hunger:
O noble wyves, ful of heigh prudence,
Lat noon humylitee youre tonge naille, Ne lat no clerk have cause or diligence To write of yow a storie of swich mervaille, As of Grisildis pacient and kynd, Lest Chichevache yow swelwe in hire entraille! The Oxford English Dictionary says Chaucer’s is the earliest known use of the word chichevache in English. In French, chiche vache means "greedy cow" and was in use as an epithet in France at least as early as the 13th century.
By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006). Cow × Human - © Macroevolution.net
|
