Fish-frog Hybrids

EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ
frog-fish hybrid An ostensible frog-fish hybrid, as pictured in the early medical journal Miscellanea Curiosa (see discussion in text below). The specimen was for the most part like a fish (head, body, tail and fins), but had the legs and haunches of a frog. If real then, this specimen would constitute an example of unequal hybrid conjoined twins in which the legs were parasitic.
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They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of nameless design.
—H. P. Lovecraft,
The Shadow over Innsmouth
Georg Wolfgang WedelGeorg Wolfgang Wedel
1645-1721

Wedel was for many years a professor of medicine at the University of Jena. During ten different semesters, he was chosen as leader of the entire University (Rektor der Alma Mater).
Caution: While reports of this cross do exist, any acceptance of such claims would require a testable specimen.

There are old reports about fish-frog hybrids, some of which are quoted below. This cross, if honestly reported, represents interbreeding between two separate vertebrate classes, Pisces and Amphibia.

Perhaps the most interesting of these reports is a description of such a creature by the German physician Georg Wolfgang Wedel (1645-1721), since it includes pictures of the specimen (above) and appears in a scholarly publication, Miscellanea Curiosa (1682-1683, Obs. CLVII, pp. 381-382). Wedel describes a specimen that was mostly like a fish, but had the hindlegs and haunches of a frog (see illustration above). According to the report, it was found at Gotha† in Germany on August 25, 1682.

† Therefore, if it still exists, this specimen may be in the Kunstkammer of the Dukes of Saxe-Gotha at Friedenstein Castle (Schloss Friedenstein) in Gotha, mailing address: Castle Museum at Friedenstein Castle, 99867 Gotha, Germany. Possibly, too, it is in one of the collections of the University of Jena.

A notice about an ostensible fish-amphibian hybrid appeared in the Cloverport, Kentucky, newspaper The Breckenridge News (Jun. 1, 1921, p. 6, col. 2):

FOUR-LEGGED FISH CAUGHT
IN DRIPPING SPRINGS, KY.

    Princeton, Ky., May 27.—An unusual freak of nature has been discovered here in the shape of a four-legged fish. The freak has the head and tail of a catfish with legs which resemble a frog. It was caught with a hook by E. R. Jones while fishing in the pond of Lee Wyatt in the Dripping Springs section of this county. The Rev. J. F. Claycomb, pastor of the Presbyterian church here, has preserved the unusual freak in a solution in a bottle.

Another frog-fish hybrid is described in a notice in the Bel Air, Maryland, newspaper The Aegis & Intelligencer (Jun. 19, 1891, p. 2, col. 3):

    Mr. John P. Leight, of Otter Point Fishing Shore, sends us a curious freak of nature. It is part fish and part frog, being about three inches in length. It resembles a catfish but has hind legs like those of a frog. Where the fore legs of a frog should be found are short, unformed legs,§ somewhat resembling fins.
§ The absence of one or more appendages, or portions of appendages (stump limbs), seems to be more common in distant hybrids.

Another such animal is mentioned in a list of specimens collected from the seabottom in the Hawaiian Islands. Its description here is excerpted from the Honolulu newspaper The Hawaiian Star (Apr. 24, 1902, p. 7):

One quaint object came up from 600 fathoms the other day with a big head and stomach and tapering body and there is a queer combination of fish and frog that looks like a freak. It is a small specimen, this latter object, a fish with a skin, not scales, carrying in addition to a set of fins, four legs shaped like a frog's toes and webs and all.

The fish described in the report last quoted may simply have been a frogfish. There are many different kinds of frogfish, for example, the kind pictured below, which is the Hispid Frogfish (Antennarius hispidus):

frogfish

News notice about a fish with two webbed feet >>

A ring of related crosses:

Fish x Frog

Frog x Human

Human x Fish



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


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