Human-chicken Hybrids
Page 3: Reports
EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ
Human Hands or Feet
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Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
—E. E. Cummings
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This webpage is a compilation of reports describing a variety of ostensible human-chicken-hybrids with human hands or feet.
A chicken with a human hand was reported on page 3, column 2, of the March 25, 1884, issue of The Louisiana Democrat, a newspaper published in Alexandria, Louisiana (source).
A guardian angel, one type of bird-human hybrid.
Egyptian Ba-soul, another type of bird-human hybrid (detail from a mural, Tomb TT 290, 19th Dynasty).
Cow-human
Cat-human
Dog-cow
Pig-dog
Dog-human
Case 1 | Case 2
Attachments:
Cow-deer
Horse-deer
Replacements:
Dog-human
Hare-human
Moose-deer
A subsequent mention of this same chicken appeared on page 3, column 3, of the April 3, 1884, issue of the same newspaper (source). The story refers to an exhibition of various unusual animals at the Exchange Hotel there in Alexandria (of which the previously mentioned R. T. Hynson was the proprietor). The relevant passage from the article refers to
Bunch of fives is a now archaic slang term meaning a fist (i.e., the five fingers bundled into a fist), and the comparison to the hand of a fairy maiden is apparently a reference to the diminutive size of the chicken’s bizarre appendage.
In the following year a report about what seems to have been a separate, but similar chicken-human hybrid appeared on page 3, column 4, of the May 28, 1885, issue of The Anderson Intelligencer, a newspaper published in Anderson, South Carolina (source). The story, which originally appeared in the Lancaster, South Carolina Ledger reads as follows:
Stover was a resident of Oakhurst, South Carolina, an unincorporated community about ten miles southeast of Lancaster.
Another case of a chicken with a human hand attached to its rump appeared on page 5, column 4, of the June 24, 1911, issue of the Evening Times-Republican, a newspaper published in Marshalltown, Iowa (source). In a list of notices about events in surrounding towns, the entry for Ottumwa reads:
Ottumwa
Frank S. McCullough has a freak chicken of the White Leghorn variety, a bit of puffy chanticler that has two pink feet of four toes perfectly formed and in proper place, also a caudal [i.e., tail-like] extension that ends with a five-toed foot closely resembling a tiny human hand. The singular specimen is the property of Mrs. Harve Gephart, 1201 North Elm Street.
Note: It was also in Ottumwa where thirty years earlier a woman was reported as having given birth to five children half human and half dog.
Ancient representation of a bird-human hybrid (Black-figure kylix with siren, Greece, 6th century B.C.E.).
Yet another case of a chicken with a human hand appeared on page 4, column 2, of the April 4, 1908, issue of The Ocala Evening Star, a newspaper published in Ocala, Florida (source).
A THREE-LEGGED CHICKEN
And still another chicken with a human hand roosts on page 3, column 1, of the December 18, 1871, issue of The Daily State Journal, a newspaper published in Alexandria, Virginia (source):
And a case of a chicken having one foot like a human’s limped onto page 3, column 4, of the July 19, 1901, issue of Emmons County Record, a newspaper published in Williamsport, North Dakota (source):
By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).
Birds of Joy and Sorrow (Artist: Viktor Vasnetsov)