The HühnermenschA human-chicken hybrid?Hybrids out of HistoryEUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS Warning! Readers may find this page disturbing…
Note: It has been my policy in listing reports of hybrids to include all serious allegations, especially those of scholars, whether or not the hybrid alleged seems possible or likely to me. This policy, I think, helps to eliminate subjective judgment on my part, and therefore should remove at least one source of systematic bias from my work. It also helps to fulfill the ethical obligation of telling not just the truth, but the whole truth.
Although some people may take lurid interest in gazing at pictures of deformed infants such as those shown on this page, this article was written for a different reason, that being to record information that will assist scientists in answering a single question: How different can two animals be if they are to produce a hybrid together? Of course, this question cannot be answered by simply reading this page. After all, the creature discussed here may not even be a hybrid (though genetic tests of the specimen would probably be able to resolve that issue). But the information documented here will help anyone who wishes to investigate the matter further. In 1735, the German physician Gottlieb Friderici (1693-1742) attended the delivery of an infant in the small town of Taucha, a few kilometers northeast of Leipzig. His patient, 28-year-old Johanna Sophia Schmied, had previously given birth to three normal boys, and Friderici anticipated nothing unusual. “But then,” he writes,
from this fourth pregnancy she brought forth a dreadful monster, which I propose to describe. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin: “Tandem quarta vice gravida, horrendum hoc, quod describendum iam mihi proposui, in lucem edidit monstrum.”]
Friderici's “dreadful monster,” stillborn that day after an eight-month gestation, was indeed peculiar, so peculiar that he took the trouble to write up a detailed anatomical account, entitled Monstrum humanum rarissimum (i.e., An Exceedingly Rare Human Monster), which he published two years later (Friderici 1737). He also immediately hired an artist to prepare engravings of this strange birth, now known as the Hühnermensch (“chicken-human”). The resulting illustrations, reproduced here, accompanied Friderici's account. This remarkable specimen has been preserved in the collection of the Heimatmuseum und Naturalienkabinett Waldenburg, a museum in Saxony, and is therefore available for genetic testing (see photo of specimen at far right). Either by coincidence or by heredity, it does seem to have enough characteristics in common with chickens to earn its name. Friderici repeatedly commented on the ostensible connection this babe makes between Class Mammalia and Class Aves. For example, during the course of his anatomical description, he says,
The upper extremities are not unlike those of a plucked chicken … and the digits, while normal in order and number, have claws exactly like those of a chicken. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin: “Extremitates superiores significat, brachia scilicet alis gallinarum, plumis privatarum, non absimilia. Cubito annexae manus oculis se exponunt, digitis quidem, si rationem numeri et ordinis habeas, legitimis, unguibus autem pullorum ungulis plane similibus.”]
“The deformed feet,” he says,
which are in an abnormal position and attached to chicken-like shanks, are, with the exception of their soles, of a wholly unwonted form, with the toes marvelously distorted and tipped with claws that are likewise exactly those of a domestic chicken. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin: “adjectos trunco pedes monstrat, utpote qui, inusitatum plane situm obtinentes, cum gallinarum cruribus aliqua ex parte convenire videntur, si a plantis pedum discesseris, quae ab humanis quidem non diversae sunt, at digiti tamen mire distorti apparent, ac ungues itidem pullorum gallinaceorum unguas referunt.”]
As do chickens, this literal Wunderkind has eye rings (periophthalmic rings) and a red, comb-like structure atop its head, both composed of red tissue, as in chickens. In addition, as in all birds, the ears are represented by only a small opening with no raised, external ears (pinnae). See illustration at far right. Also as in birds, external genitalia are absent and the testes are internal.
It can also be seen in the illustrations that the skin is loosely attached to the underlying tissues, so loosely that it forms webbing at various regions of flexure (neck, elbow, knee, crotch). The skin of a bird, too, is more elastic and more loosely attached to the body than is that of the typical mammal, which is generally interpreted as giving birds the freedom of movement needed for flight (Stettenheim 2000). The heart, too, was larger than that of an ordinary human infant. And, according to a Kentucky University webpage on the avian circulatory system,
Birds tend to have larger hearts than mammals (relative to body size and mass). The relatively large hearts of birds may be necessary to meet the high metabolic demands of flight. Among birds, smaller birds have relatively larger hearts (again relative to body mass) than larger birds. Hummingbirds have the largest hearts (relative to body mass) of all birds, probably because hovering takes so much energy.
During the necropsy, Friderici found that the comb-like structure atop the head actually contained brain tissue, a situation reminiscent of that described by Purohit et al. (1977), who note that many hybrids produced by crossing pheasants with chickens are exencephalic (i.e., the brain is located outside the skull). If the Hühnermensch actually is a bird-mammal hybrid, then at this distance in time, one can only speculate about what might have happened back in Taucha all those many years ago. Did a rooster wander into a rustic bedroom and sit for a time on the lap of his naked mistress? Perhaps Johanna Sophia Schmied was a member of a coven that engaged in dark orgiastic rites that resulted in a weird creature seeing the light of day? Or possibly one day while gathering eggs she had her hands full and placed some rooster-semen-coated eggs in her underpants to carry them back to the house? Whatever happened, it seems the Hühnermensch took flight from there. At any rate, this specimen is a very interesting one and, given that it would no doubt be an F₁ hybrid (if it is a hybrid at all), it would be very easy to detect its origins with genetic testing. One quick and easy method would be PCR amplification using human and chicken primers. As Cicero once said (De Officiis, I, 6),
We must not treat the unknown as known and too readily accept it. And he who wishes to avoid this error (as all should do) will devote both time and attention to the weighing of evidence.
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