Dog × Hawk

Mammalian Hybrids

Cornelius Gemma

From Wikipedia: Gemma’s two major works, De arte cyclognomica (Antwerp, 1569) and De naturae divinis characterismis (Antwerp, 1575), have been called “true ‘hidden gems’ in early modern intellectual history,” bringing together such topics as medicine, astronomy, astrology, teratology, divination, eschatology, and encyclopaedism.

Maternal impressions

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Up until the early twentieth century, it was widely believed that the exposure of a pregnant mother to a particular animal, especially one that frightened her, could result in her child taking on the characteristics of that animal. Thus, it was thought that a woman frightened by a dog stood an increased chance of giving birth to a dog-faced baby. This notion was applied also to animal mothers giving birth to offspring with mixed characteristics. But no scientist today would accept a psycho-spiritual explanation of this sort.

Note: Any claim that hybrids can be produced from this highly disparate and very poorly documented cross would require confirmation from a testable specimen.

Dog × hawk is perhaps the least well-documented bird-mammal cross discussed on this website. On the other hand, chicken-human hybrids, which have been reported many times—including at least three separate reports by scholars—are probably the best-documented cross involving a mammal and a bird.

The Belgian physician Cornelius Gemma (1535-1578), a professor of medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven, claimed to have seen in his youth a dog with a head like a hawk’s. His mention of this weird hybrid appears in his De naturae divinis characterismis (1575, p. 77), and English translation reads,

Gemma cited this case as an example within the context of his discussion of the supposed phenomenon of maternal impressions, that is, the old idea that a mother’s undergoing a shocking or frightening experience involving an animal can cause her to give birth to an offspring that resembles that animal (see sidebar at right).

Paullini

A Cat with Goose Feet

Christian Franz Paullini (1686) communicated an abridgement of a manuscript compilation of curiosities collected by the monks Isibordus von Amelunxen and Alexander Insulanus at the Imperial Abbey of Corvey around 1200 A.D. Observation LIII Paullini 1686, p. 212 of that compilation states that in the year 1194, “near the abbey, a cat had been born with the perfect feet of a goose, which the abbot had preserved on account ot its rarity.” However, in 1634, during the Thirty Years War, the abbey was sacked, and it was later demolished. So it is unlikely that this preserved specimen survives. (See also: Isensee 1843, p. 287)

Of course, merely saying something is so does not make it so. Therefore Gemma's claim that he actually saw such a hybrid is quoted here primarily for the sake of completeness, because each different type of hybrid cross listed in this compilation serves as a heading under which reports of that type are collected.

Other accounts of describing bird-mammal hybrids appear in the early literature. For example, a rather similar hybrid, a pig with the feet of a hawk, is mentioned by the ancient historian Tacitus (Ann. 12.64):

And far more recently, in Brazil, a pig with feet like those of a chicken was reported in online news sources. The animal, pictured below, belonged to a farmer in the town of Nova Veneza.^†,‡ Biologists consulted for the news reports attributed its abnormal pedal extremities to dietary deficiencies.

A pig-chicken hybrid? An animal reportedly born on a farm in southern Brazil in 2013.

A comparison of one of the feet of the Brazilian animal with that of a chicken.

More about bird-mammal hybrids >>

Deer-cow hybrids?

Table of contents >>

Bibliography >>

Biology Dictionary >>

By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).

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