Pig-human Hybrids

No less a personage than the great philosopher John Locke gave credence to the existence of pig-human hybrids. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690, III, Chapter 6, §27) he asks, “Who would undertake to resolve what species that monster was of, which is mentioned

by Licetus (Bk. i. c. 3), with a man’s head and hog’s body? … Had the upper part to the middle been of human shape, and all below swine, had it been murder to destroy it? Or must the bishop have been consulted, whether it were man enough to be admitted to the font or no? As I have been told it happened in France some years since, in somewhat a like case.

Becmann. And the German chronicler Johann Christoph Becmann, a professor at the University of Frankfurt, states (Historische Beschreibung der Chur und Mark Brandenburg, 1751, Volume 1, p. 883) that in the marketplace at Prenzlau, on July 15, 1587, a sow farrowed a piglet with a human head. He also says (ibid.) that similar births occurred in Berlin in 1647, in Golnau, Pomerania, on May 19, 1652, and near Havelberg, in 1719.

Floyer. In 1699 the English physician Sir John Floyer (1649-1734) authored an account (Floyer 1699) of two supposed human-pig hybrids (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 21). There he states that “In May 1699 there was shewed to me a Pig, at Weeford in Staffordshire, with

a Face something representing an Humane Fœtus, and the roundness of the Head, and the flatness of the Ears surprised all Persons, and they did usually apprehend it to be a Humane Face, produced by the Copulation of two Species. … This kind of Monstrous Pigs … I believe is very frequent, because I had another [piglet] of the same Kind sent me out Derbyshire, which had a resemblance of a Man’s face and all the other parts of a Pig, and this had the same Chin, and depression betwixt the Eyes, and the roundness of the Head and flatness of the Ears I have above described.

Head of an alleged man-pig (Floyer 1699)

Floyer himself, ascribed the human-like heads of these piglets to “compression of the Womb” (that is, as Floyer explains, pressure on the piglet’s head from the uterus, placenta or adjacent piglets). But from his account, it’s clear that others believed these animals to be pig-human hybrids. He says one, a male, was born alive but died soon thereafter because he could not nurse.

It’s of interest that the shape of the head of the animal as described by Floyer and as pictured in his illustration (see figure, above right) is similar to that of the “monkey-pigs” pictured on another page of this website (“the same Chin, and depression betwixt the Eyes, and the roundness of the Head and flatness of the Ears”). However, if his animals were in fact hybrids, it’s clear that in England in 1699 the nonporcine parent would not have been a monkey. Floyer notes that the sex of the Derbyshire “piglet” could not be determined, but that the Weeford animal was a male.

London. An anonymous 1676 pamphlet announced the birth in London of a pig with human-like features. From the description given, it’s clear that the specimen in question did not differ much in its appearance from many other putative pig-human hybrids, that is, its skin was soft and smooth as a baby’s, a frontal proboscis was present, the face and skull exhibited various human-like features, and the hooves were curled up in front. As in many other reports about distant hybrids, the specimen in question was anophthalmic, that is, it lacked eyes (more cases of anophthalmia and cyclopea in pig-human mixes).

An abnormal Puritan psychology led to all kinds of repression, furtiveness, & grotesque hidden crime, while the long winters & backwoods isolation fostered monstrous secrets that never came to light.

—H. P. Lovecraft
Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge^§

New Haven, Connecticut. In the Records of the Colony and Plantation of New-Haven, from 1638 to 1649 (Hoadly 1857), in an account of the court trial of one George Spencer (pp. 62-63), which took place in New Haven on March 2, 1641, there is an account of a probable pig-human hybrid, a cyclops:

The 14^th of February, 1641, John Wakeman a planter and member of this church acquainted the magistrates thatt a sow of his [which] he had lately bought of Hen: Browning, then [with] pigge, had now brought among divers liveing and rightly shaped pigs, one pdigious monster, [which] he then brought [with] him to be viewed and considered. The monster was come to the full growth as the other piggs for ought could be discerned, butt brought forth dead. Itt had no haire on the whole body, the skin was very tender, and of a reddish white collour like a childs; the head most straing, itt had butt one eye in the midle of the face, and thatt large and open, like some blemished eye of a man; over the eye, in the bottome of the foreheade [which] was like a childes, a thing of flesh grew forth and hung downe, itt was hollow, and like a mans instrum[ent] of genration [that is, a frontal proboscis]. A nose, mouth and chinne deformed, butt nott much vnlike a childs, the neck and eares had allso such resemblance. This monster being after opened and compared [with] a pig of the same farrow, there was an aparant difference in all the inwards.

Having been found guilty, Spenser was hanged, and the mother sow, too, was put to death (see Hoadly 1857, p. 72). In such cases the animal “accomplice” was often executed as well. The religious motives behind this seemingly needless punishment of a brute animal were spelled out by the Jewish scholar Philo Judaeus (The Special Laws, III, 8:46):

And some persons prefer mules to every other kind of animal for the yoke, since their bodies are very compact, and are very strong and powerful; and accordingly, in the pastures and stalls where they keep their horses, they also keep asses of an extraordinary size, which they call celones, in order that they may breed with the mares; and then the mares produce a mixed animal, half horse and half ass, which, since Moses knew that its production was wholly contrary to nature, he forbade the existence of with all his might by a general injunction, that that no union or combination between different kinds of animals should on any account be permitted. (48) Therefore he provided thus against those evils in a manner suited to and consistent with nature; and from a long distance off, as from a watchtower, he admonished men and kept them in the straight path, in order that both men and women, learning from these percepts of his, might abstain from unlawful connections. (49) If, therefore, a man seek to indulge himself with a quadruped, or if a woman surrender herself to a quadruped, they shall all die, both the man or woman and the quadruped. The human beings, because they have gone beyond even the bounds of intemperance itself, becoming discoverers of unprecedented appetites, and because with their new inventions they have introduced most detestable pleasures, the very mention of which is infamous; and the beasts shall die, because they have been subservient to such iniquities, and also to prevent their bringing forth or begetting any thing intolerable, as would naturally be the result of such pollutions. (50) Moreover, those who have even a slight care for what is becoming would never use such animals as those for any purpose of life, but would reject and abominate them, loathing their very sight, and thinking that whatever they touched would at once become impure and polluted. And it is not well that those things which are of no use for life should live at all, since they are only a superfluous burden on the earth, as some one has called them.

Another New Haven case, also cyclopean, is found in Dexter (1917, vol. 1, pp. 158-159). In that book, this record for the general court session for January 15, 1652, appears:

The Governor acquainted the Towne that the cause of calling [them] together this day is aboute a monsterous pigg, [which] was brought forth by a sow of John Vincons: it was like a pigg in the body & leges, but [without] haire, the skin being white; the head something like a piggs head, but y^e nether chapp [i.e., the lower jaw] something like the nether chapp of a man. one eare something like a piggs eare, the other like two little teates hanging downe, one great red eye in [the] face of it, and from the forehead a peece of skiney flesh hanging downe, hollow like [the] member of a man [that is, a frontal proboscis].

And two additional likely cases are briefly mentioned in Hoadly (1857, p. 295), where, in the record of the courtroom examination of a suspect taking place on February 1, 1646, there is mention of "a sow of Mrs. Lambertons pigging two monsters, one of them had a faire & white skinne & head [and] another [had] a head lik that of a childe."

An alleged pig-human hybrid that, according Johann Georg Schenck, was born on Cyprus near Nicosia, on Dec. 12, 1568, along with four normal piglets. (source: Monstrorum historia memorabilis, 1609, p. 113, fig. 85). The structure shown on the forehead may represent a frontal proboscis.

Nicosia. Johann Georg Schenck (1609, pp. 113-114) lists seven old cases of pigs born with human heads. One of these, he says, the creature pictured at right, was born near Nicosia on the island of Cyprus in the year 1568.

Germany. Johannes Praetorius (Neüliche Miß-Geburten, 1678) reports three pig-human hybrids born in Germany. One was a piglet born with a human head on the twentieth of June, 1678 in Rinteln [a small town in Lower Saxony]. The other was a "half a pig and half a man" farrowed on a farm outside Mühlhausen. A third was born in Eisleben in the fall of 1669, a child with the snout of a pig.

China. An additional case is listed in Chinese records of the Shanghai region, a pig born in the year 1600 with a human head and hands (Macgowan, 1860, p.70). Also there is an early twentieth-century report about Chinese Buddhists interpreting a pig with a human hand as an accursed reincarnation.

Ambroise Paré
c. 1510 – 1590

Brussels. French surgeon Ambroise Paré (1646, pp. 665-666) describes a Belgian case:

In the year 1564 in Brussels, at the house of a man named Joest Dickpert, living on Warmoesbroeck Street, a sow farrowed six pigs, the first of which was a prodigy having a man’s face, as well as arms with hands, and representing humanity in a general way from the shoulders up; but it had the two hind legs and rear parts of a swine, and the genitals of a sow. It nursed along with the others and lived two days, but then it was killed, along with the sow, on account of the horror that people had of it; this prodigy is here illustrated [see woodcut figure below] most naturally, just as it was in life. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]

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Pig-human hybrid that Paré says was born in Brussels in the year 1564 (Paré 1646, p. 665).

Charing Cross. Sir John Hayward, in his Annals of the First Four Years of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, writes that in the year 1562, “a sowe farrowed a pigge having hands and fingers like a man child” (Crawford 2005; Hayward 1840, vol. 7, p. 107). A contemporary account of this “piglet” published in a broadside that same year reads as follows:

This present yere of oure Lord God a thousande five hundred three score and two, one Marke Finkle a joiner dwelling beside Charing Crosse by Westminster, had a sow that brought forth one pigge onely, upon the seventh of Maye, beinge Ascention daye, the whiche pigge had … two fore feet, like unto handes, eche hande havinge thre long fingers and a thumbe, bothe the thumbes growinge on the outsides of the handes. [quoted in Lilly 1870, pp. 45-46.]

Von Dreyhaupt
1699 – 1768

Moritzburg. The German historian Johann Christoph von Dreyhaupt, in his treatise on his native Halle (Beschreibung des Saalkreises, 1755, vol. I, p. 645), states that a piglet with a human head was born in that city in 1523. He goes on to say that

On Easter Sunday, 1536, as Cardinal Albert was conducting high Mass in the chapel of Moritzburg Castle [in Saxony], a remarkable monstrosity was cast down before him, which was most hideous to behold. It stood on two legs, looked like an ape or a human being, and its tongue lolled from a gaping mouth and hung down to its neck. Its eyes were covered with spotted blisters. The right ear was just like a man’s, the left, like a pig’s. The creature was bald, and between the ears was a mark like blue thread. The mouth and nose were apelike, the hind portion of its body, like a pig. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original German.]

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Moritzburg Castle, Saxony, Germany

Above: Fabio Colonna's description of a pig-human hybrid supposedly born in Italy in 1528.

Fabio Colonna
1567 – 1640

Italy. The Italian naturalist and botanist Fabio Colonna described a pig-human hybrid born in Italy (Phytobasanos siue Plantarum aliquot historia in qua describuntur diuersi …, Appendix: Piscium aliquot plantarumque novum (Neapoli, 1592), p. 5). The following is a translation of the relevant portion of the text:

To this may be added, because it is extraordinary, even unbelievable if it were only heard of, but it is attested by the word and teaching of many authorities, and my dear grandmother Caterina Pelegrina also told me about it, and I am persuaded it is certain, given that her living father, Hieronymus Abellar, and other citizens of the town of Regulo confirm it, in the year of our salvation 1528, a monstrous animal was born of a sow, having the head in all respects like that of a human being, but the remainder of the body like that of its mother.

Liège. Paré (1646, pp. 665-666) mentions an early case “In the year 1110 a sow in the town of Liège [Belgium] farrowed a pig having the head and the face of a man, as well as human hands and feet, but the rest was like a pig.” His illustration of this animal appears below.

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An additional artist’s conception of the pig-human hybrid of Liege (Paré 1646, p. 665), also pictured at the top of this page.

Note: In his eclesiastical history of Liège (Historia Ecclesiae Leodiensis, p. 349), the Jesuit Bartholomaeus Fisen (1591-1649), gives the date of the Liège birth as 1118 A.D. This case is also mentioned in the Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris (c. 1200-1259): “At the same time [1109 CE], in a parish of Liège, a sow gave birth to a piglet with the face of a man.” Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin: “Eodem tempore in parochia Legiensi porca porcellum enixa est, sed faciem hominis habentem” (Luard 1874, vol. 2, p. 136). But given that Paris makes no mention of hands and feet, Paré may have read about this birth in some other source. English historian Sir John Hayward (1613, p. 303) refers to what seems to be the same case. He says the event took place in the thirteenth year of the reign of Henry the First, which would have been 1112 A.D. Hayward notes merely that “A pigge was farrowed with a face like a childe.”

A medieval pig-human hybrid with pig body and human head and hands (Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, Brandenburg an der Havel, Brandenburg, Germany, circa 1230 AD).

Human-pig hybrid (Greece, 5th century, B.C., Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland).

Ancient times. There are also various classical references to such births. Thus, the Roman historian Livy reports that a pig with a human head was born at Sinuessa in 198 B.C. (Livy 31.12, 32.9), and another at Tarquinii in 210 B.C. (Livy 27.4).^‡

‡ The ruins of Sinuessa are located in the modern-day municipality of Mondragone, Campania, Italy. Tarquinii, now Tarquinia, lies in the province of Viterbo, Lazio, Italy.

And long before the Romans, Akkadian omen lists specified the consequences of sexual connection between humans and pigs (Freedman 2017, p. 72).

Some thoughts

Variation. Note that in all reports of human-pig mixes cited on this page, the mother is a sow and it is the forepart of these tertium quids that resembles humans and the rear, pigs. There is, however, a good bit of variation among the accounts with respect to how much of the forepart is human, varying from cases where a single foreleg bears a human hand, up to cases where both forelegs do, and the head and face bear a perfect resemblance to the human condition. A 18th century case reports the presence of a human ear on one side and a pig ear on the other (as did news stories about a birth at Friendship, Tennessee in 1877). There is also variation with respect to the presence/absence of a frontal proboscis, which seems to be reported in something less than half the cases.

However, there are a few reports on record about human mothers giving birth to half-human half-pig creatures, and it is interesting that in such cases the structure of the body is usually said to be reversed, that is, the foreparts are pig-like and the hind parts are human-like.

Asymmetry in hybrids: There are various cases known, where hybridization produces an asymmetry in body parts similar to those seen in some of the alleged hybrids listed on this page. For example, in my book on avian hybrids (McCarthy 2006), I mention a hybrid between Laysan Albatross (Diomedea immutabilis) and Black-footed Albatross (D. nigripes). This composite individual had one black foot, while the other resembled that of a Laysan. Similarly, a goldeneye-hooded merganser hybrid (Bucephala clangula × Lophodytes cucullatus) had scalation on one leg like a goldeneye, but the other leg was like L. cucullatus (ibid.). There are many other cases (documented on this website) in which mammalian hybrids have appendages differing in a similar way, that is, in having a left foot/leg like that of one parent, but a right foot/leg like the other. As might be expected, asymmetry can affect other portions of the body as well. For example, Mengel (1971, p. 324) mentions an F₁ dog-wolf hybrid (Canis familiaris × Canis latrans with asymmetric teeth (C though M2 much longer on left side). And Handy et al. (2004) reported increased levels of asymmetry in plant hybrids.

What, exactly, is a human being? At the top of this page, the philosopher John Locke was quoted to show that he accepted man-pigs as real. Given that belief, it is not surprising that within the context of philosophical debate he argued that no one really knows exactly what a human being might be: “So far are we from certainly knowing what a man is; though perhaps

it will be judged great ignorance to make any doubt about it. And yet, I think, I may say, that the certain boundaries of that species are so far from being determined … that very material doubts may still arise about it. And I imagine, none of the definitions of the word man, which we yet have, nor descriptions of that sort of animal, are so perfect and exact as to satisfy a considerate inquisitive person.

Human origins >>

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Bibliography >>

Biology Dictionary >>

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

Dog-cow hybrids?

§ October 9, 1932, Selected Letters, III, 423.

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