WRONG-FOOTING A ONE-LEGGED MYSTERY SNAKE FROM CHINA

Close-up photo of China's one-legged mystery snake (© CEN/Europics) - click it to enlarge it

Some zoological photographs are so bizarre that long after they first hit the news headlines, they still continue to circulate online, like restless ghosts doomed to wander forever down the highways and byways of the worldwide web, resisting all attempts to expose them as hoaxes or explain them as grotesque yet nonetheless natural phenomena. One such image that seems to fall into the latter category is the example that opens this present ShukerNature blog post – namely, a supposed one-legged, claw-footed snake from China.

This anomalous serpent made its media debut as far back as mid-September 2009, since when it has been the online focus of various less than credible claims and all manner of decidedly credulous comments, but no rigorous, in-depth assessment. Consequently, I felt that it was high time that this sorry situation was rectified, so here is my own personal appraisal of this very curious case.

The story broke on 14 September 2009, with news reports worldwide presenting the now-(in)famous photograph reproduced above of a dead snake seemingly possessing a single small but perfectly-formed claw-footed leg, and providing the following scant details concerning it. One typical report appeared in the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper for that particular date, and provides the standard set of details reiterated in all other media accounts that I have seen. It stated that Mrs Duan (aka Dean) Qiongxiu, a 66-year-old woman from Suining in Southwest China, had woken up during the middle of the night, heard a scratching sound, turned on her bedroom's light, and then, in her quoted words, "saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw". She was so frightened by it that she grabbed one of her shoes and beat the unfortunate if uncanny serpent to death before preserving its battered carcase – measuring 16 in long and as thick as a human little finger - in a bottle of alcohol. It was subsequently forwarded to the Life Sciences Department at China's West Normal University in Nanchang. Snake expert Long Shuai was quoted as saying: "It is truly shocking but we won't know the cause until we've conducted an autopsy".

Those, then, are the facts of this case – such that they are. Not even the snake's species is identified. However, a popular identity nominated in various internet reptile forum/discussion groups is Dinodon rufozonatum, a colubrid with a wide distribution in East Asia, including China. It measures up to 28 in long, but is very slender, with brown background colouration marked with transverse crimson bands dorsally, pearl-coloured ventrally. It preys upon a wide range of small animals, including other snakes, lizards, small birds, fishes, and frogs, but is not believed to be venomous. This species certainly resembles the mystery snake in the photograph.

A Chinese specimen of Dinodon rufozonatum (©Zhangmoon618/Wikipedia)

As for the results of the autopsy, more than four-and-a-half years later the world is apparently still waiting for them, because as far as I am aware, none have ever been made public. All that we do have, therefore, is supposition, and plenty of it, but nothing substantiated by corroborative evidence. So, based solely upon its appearance as portrayed within this photograph, how can the one-legged snake of China be explained?

Four plausible theories exist (i.e. discounting those claiming it to be an unnatural freak created in some secret laboratory, an alien entity, a radiation-induced mutant, or some paranormal aberration of occult origin).

Theory #1 is that it is a hoax. In other words, either the photograph is a fake image created by computerised photo-manipulation, or it is real but depicts a skilfully-manufactured model or comparable artifact. Despite much online research, I have found no evidence to support either of these possibilities, and none of the famous hoaxbusting websites has outed it either.

Theory #2 is that the creature is genuine and represents a striking, extreme example of atavism, i.e. the spontaneous development by an individual of a morphological feature possessed by far-distant ancestral forms or species but normally lost in their present-day descendants. I have many cases of atavism on file, covering a wide range of examples and species (click here for my ShukerNature blog post on atavistic extra toes in horses). Particularly pertinent to this case, however, are those featuring whales and other cetaceans exhibiting rudimentary external hind limbs – normally, cetaceans lack such limbs and even the pelvic girdle itself is very small. A comparable, but even more specialised situation occurs in snakes.

Millions of years ago, the ancestors of snakes possessed four well-formed legs and two limb girdles, but these became ever more reduced in form during ophidian evolution, so that modern-day snakes have entirely lost their forelimbs and pectoral girdle as well as – in most cases - their pelvic girdle and hind limbs. Famously, however, boas and pythons still possess a vestigial pelvic girdle and rudimentary external hind limbs. These latter limbs take the form of a pair of very small spur-like femur bones (known as pelvic or anal spurs) appressed to their body wall (on either side of the vent in males).

Could the claw-footed leg of China's unipodal serpent wonder therefore be an evolutionary, atavistic throwback to the snakes' distant antecedents? If so, a genetic mutation may have occurred during its embryonic development that somehow unlocked the still-preserved but normally-suppressed code in its DNA for creating a well-formed limb, foot, and clawed digits.

The pelvic (anal) spurs on a male albino Burmese python (© Dawson/Wikipedia)

Although the various fully-verified cases of hind-limbed cetaceans demonstrate that such a concept is not beyond the realms of possibility, there are some serious problems to consider when attempting to apply this same scenario to China's legged snake. First and foremost is the anomalous limb's position. Far from being situated in the vicinity of where either the snake's pectoral girdle or its pelvic girdle would be if it too had been recalled into existence via atavism, the leg is located, very oddly, in the middle of the snake's body instead, seeming to emerge from somewhere in the rib-cage. Even in atavism, a recalled appendage normally arises in the anatomically correct location for it, not in some entirely incorrect position. Secondly, the foot's orientation is wrong too, as its sole is facing forward, towards the proximal end of the snake, instead of facing backward, like all animal feet do. Thirdly, the limb, feet, and clawed digits appear to be fully-developed, not rudimentary or at least incompletely formed, like hind limbs in whales and other examples of atavistic appendages normally are. Consequently, I consider it unlikely that the limb of China's legged snake is an atavistic appendage.

Theory #3 is that the leg does not belong to the snake, but rather is from some originally external source that the snake has swallowed, and has burst through its gut and body wall. This could have happened if, for instance, the snake had swallowed whole (as snakes generally do) a seized lizard or toad (both of which are animal types represented in China by species with limbs resembling the snake's ambiguous example), and the still-living victim had kicked out violently while trying to escape from the snake's gut.

Three features of the snake make this prospect a plausible one. Firstly, the region of the snake's body from which the leg is emerging is swollen both fore and aft, which would be consistent with the presence there of the snake victim's ingested body. Click here (and then scroll halfway down the page) to see a photo of a living specimen of D. rufozonatum pictured directly after having swallowed a frog - the size, shape, and position of the swelling inside the snake that is the ingested whole frog look identical to those of the swelling inside China's legged snake. Secondly, at the base of the leg is a swollen, pedicel-like region, which could conceivably be an oedematic swelling (explaining why it has the same markings as the body of the snake) and/or an accumulation of scar tissue resulting from healing of the hole in the snake's body wall that had been created when its victim kicked through it. Thirdly, the fact that the sole of the foot points forward is inconsistent with its being an atavistic limb of the snake but is wholly consistent with its being the foreleg of a prey victim that had been swallowed head-first, as is normal practice by snakes.

Incidentally, confirmed, comparable cases have been recorded from antelope-ingesting pythons whose victims' horns have pierced through their ophidian engulfers' gut and body wall.

Theory #4: There has been some online speculation as to whether such rupturing of the snake's body wall may actually have occurred only when the woman beat it to death (i.e. the leg was not present externally prior to this), and that her description of the snake as being legged beforehand was therefore mistaken or incorrectly reported. If this were correct, however, there would not be any presence of what appears to be scar tissue consistent with healing of the hole. Instead, all that would be present would be just a unhealed hole with the leg protruding directly through it and probably stained at its base with congealed blood that had leaked out through the hole. Yet no such blood is visible there in the photograph.

Obviously, an autopsy, or even a mere x-ray, of the snake's body would readily reveal whether its gut did indeed contain the body of a prey victim and also whether the mysterious leg belonged to that victim. Equally, if the leg was instead an appendage of the snake itself, an autopsy would expose this. So it is a great puzzle why the results of the autopsy – always assuming, of course, that one was ever conducted – seem never to have been publicly released. Riddles like this legged snake need a solution, and the solution needs to be aired, even it is as mundane as a snake whose engulfed prey victim proved to be not just alive but also kicking – and very emphatically so.  Otherwise they are destined to appear and reappear in the freak shows of cyberspace ad infinitum, not to mention ad nauseam.


STOP PRESS

At the time of uploading this article of mine onto ShukerNature earlier today, I was only aware of one photograph depicting China's legged snake. Tonight, however, Facebook correspondent Andrew Webster drew my attention to a website (click here) containing two more , including this one, depicting the dead snake being held by a lady I assume to be Mrs Duan Qiongxiu:

Mrs Duan Qiongxiu(?) holding the dead legged snake (copyright holder unknown to me)

As noted by Andrew, viewed from this angle the limb appears to be that of a toad.

Speaking of which: Also well worthy of inclusion here is the following photograph (copyright owner unknown to me) of a South African night adder Causus sp. that has swallowed a toad which, in keeping with the defence mechanism of such creatures, evidently inflated itself when ingested, forcing two of its limbs through the snake's gut and body wall:

For more mysterious snakes, be sure to check out my book The Beasts That Hide From Man (Paraview: New York, 2003)

HORNED HORSES AND HORSES WITH HORNS – DECIDEDLY DIFFERENT FROM HEAD TO TOE(S)

Photograph from c.1870 depicting a very spectacular horned horse

Horned horses and horses with horns – they may sound anomalous (and indeed they are!), but such creatures are certainly one and the same thing, surely? Not at all – in fact, it is true in every sense to say that they are different from head to toe(s) !!

HORSES WITH HORNS

During the 19th Century, eminent French zoologist Baron Georges Cuvier loftily denounced that most mystical and magical of legendary beasts, the unicorn, as a zoological impossibility - claiming that a single median horn could never arise and develop from the paired frontal (brow) bones of a mammal's skull. Since Cuvier's damning pronouncement, the unicorn has received short shrift from science. Yet this attitude may be both unjust and unjustified.

The classical unicorn of equine form (Edward Topsell)

To begin with: in 1934, Maine University biologist Dr William Franklin Dove successfully, and spectacularly, refuted Cuvier's claim concerning the growth of a single median horn from the frontal bones - by creating a bovine unicorn. He achieved this remarkable feat by removing the embryonic horn buds from a day-old Ayrshire bull calf, trimming their edges flat, then transplanting them side by side onto the centre of the calf's brow. Growing in close contact with one another, the transplanted buds yielded a massive single horn, which proved so successful a weapon that its owner soon became the undisputed leader of an entire herd of cattle. Yet despite his dominance, this unicorn bull was a very placid beast, thus resembling the legendary unicorn not only morphologically but also behaviourally. Just a coincidence?

Dr Dove's remarkable bovine unicorn (Dr William Franklin Dove)

Some researchers have since speculated that perhaps ancient people knew of this simple technique, and had created single-horned herd leaders, whose imposing appearance and noble temperament thereafter became incorporated into the evolving unicorn legend.

Thus, the development of a single median horn is not an impossibility after all - at least not in cattle, that is. Horses, however, must surely be a very different matter, bearing in mind that they do not even grow paired horns (let alone median ones) - or do they?

In fact, records of horses with horns, though rare, are by no means unknown. In 1929, for instance, German zoologists P.P. Winogradow and A.L. Frolow published a short account within the journal Anatomische Anzeiger concerning a horse that had exhibited lateral horn development on its brow, accompanied by a photograph of the horse's skull.

Moreover, in an American Museum Novitates paper of 17 August 1934, S. Harmsted Chubb documented several horses each exhibiting a small pair of lateral skin-ensheathed frontal protuberances just above the eyes. In the photos of some such horses contained in Chubb's paper, however, these 'horns' can be seen to be tightly pressed against the side of the horse's skull, not projecting outward, away from the skull.

A work horse from Sheffield exhibiting a small pair of frontal protuberances, from Chubb's paper

Far more intriguing, conversely, is the following excerpt, from South American explorer Felix de Azara's Natural History of the Quadrupeds of Paraguay and the River La Plata (1837):

I have heard for a fact, that, a short time ago, a horse was born in Santa Fé de la Vera Cruz, which had two horns like a bull, four inches long, sharp and erect, growing close to the ears; and that another from Chili was brought to Don John Augustin Videla, a native of Buenos Ayres [sic], with strong horns, three inches high. This horse, they tell me, was remarkably gentle; but, when offended, he attacked like a bull. Videla sent the horse to some of his relatives in Mendoza, who gave it to an inhabitant of Cordova in Tucuman, who intended, as it was a stallion, to endeavour to form a race of horned horses. I am not aware of the results, which may probably have been favorable.

Thus, if horses can occasionally develop paired frontal horns and a median horn can be induced to grow from the frontal bones of cattle, then surely in this unrivalled age of biological modification, where sophisticated techniques yielding cloned, transgenic, and other man-made life forms are already commonplace, it would not be difficult to conduct a slightly modified version of Dove's experiments - using equine-derived horn (or horn-substitute) tissue, and a foal, instead of a calf, as the recipient?

Engineering a genuine equine unicorn would make a fascinating project for any zoological team capable of ignoring the sound of Cuvier turning loudly in his grave. After all, it isn't every day that science is granted the opportunity to create a living legend.

But if that is what constitutes a horse with horns, what, then, is a horned horse? I'm glad you asked!

HORNED HORSES

One of the most frequently reported and familiar of teratological conditions exhibited by humans is the possession of extra fingers and/or toes - polydactyly. However, this genetically-induced phenomenon has also been widely recorded among many domestic animals (e.g. dogs, cats, horses, pigs, chickens, pet rats and mice, guineapigs), as well as from wild species as diverse as bats, salamanders, leopards, llamas, and even the Malaysian flying lemur. Moreover, it can take several different forms, each under the control of a different mutant allele (gene form).

Representative sequence of evolutionary decrease in equine toe number (Mcy jerry/Wikipedia)

Probably the most famous non-human examples of extra-toed mammals can be found among the records of polydactylous horses. One of the classic examples of evolution is the gradual disappearance over millions of years of all but one of the horse's functional toes. The horse lineage began with the Eocene epoch's 'dawn horse' Hyracotherium (formerly called Eohippus), with four functional toes on each forefoot; leading on to Mesohippus of the Oligocene epoch, with three toes; to Merychippus of the Miocene, in which the two lateral toes were greatly reduced in size so that they no longer touched the ground; and to Pliohippus of the Pliocene, whose two lateral toes were merely insignificant splints whereas its central toe was massively enlarged, with its single hoof (modified toenail) bearing the animal's entire body weight. This same condition is present in normal specimens of all modern-day horses too, belonging to the genus Equus. (It should be noted, however, that this is not a direct, straight-line evolutionary series, one genus leading directly to the next, even though it is commonly if erroneously presented as such, because several other genera of horses also appeared and disappeared during equine evolution, exhibiting varying numbers of toes.)

Nevertheless, the teratological literature contains numerous well-documented cases of abnormal modern-day horses (notably of the Shire horse breed) that possess one or more well-developed lateral toes, often bearing their own hooves and sometimes even touching the ground alongside the normal, massive central toe's hoof - as if determined to reverse the course of their own evolution! The spontaneous occurrence in an individual of a trait like this that constitutes an evolutionary throwback is known as atavism.

One such horse was an extraordinary 19^th-Century specimen from Texas, which possessed a pair of well-developed lateral toes on each hind foot, curving downwards on either side of the central one like horns - as a result of which this specimen became known as the horned horse. In contrast, only one such toe, positioned on the central toe's inner side, was present on each forefoot. It was from this specimen that other polydactylous horses also became known as horned horses, a term used in particular with specimens exhibited in sideshows, carnivals, circuses, etc.

Line drawing of the original horned horse, from Texas

These very distinctive-looking horses have a long history, and include among their number a renowned steed of Julius Caesar. According to Suetonius in de Vita Caesaria (vol. LXVI):

[Caesar] used to ride a remarkable horse, which had feet that were almost human, the hoofs being cleft like toes. It was born in his own stables, and as the soothsayers declared that it showed the owner would be lord of the world, he reared it with great care, and was the first to mount it; it would allow no other rider.

This account and many others were included within a major paper on the subject by Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, published during April 1892 in the American Journal of Science. As Marsh noted, the extent of polydactyly exhibited by horses varies greatly. Some such specimens merely exhibit a small extra toe (often barely visible externally) on the inner side of one or both forefeet. In more notable cases, two such toes, one on each side of the normal central toe, may be present, plus one or a comparable pair on one or both hind feet (although these latter are usually smaller than their counterparts on the forefeet). In much rarer cases, however, these various supernumerary toes may be much more highly developed, to the extent that the affected feet compare favourably with the normal feet of the Miocene horse Merychippus, and even occasionally with the Oligocene's Mesohippus. Most dramatic of all are the extremely rare examples that not only mirror the Mesohippus condition but also possess a tiny fourth toe, representing the ancestral pollex (thumb) or hallux (big toe).

Line drawing of Clique

The most celebrated example of this last-mentioned and very extreme equine polydactylous state is the so-called 'six-footed' horse owned by Theodore F. Wood of New Jersey and named Clique, who was exhibited at shows for many years in the U.S.A. and elsewhere. Clique died at an advanced age in January 1891, whereupon his owner presented his body to Prof. Marsh for the Yale Museum. Marsh observed that whereas his hind feet were basically normal, each of Clique's forefeet sported a well-developed toe on the central toe's inner side. For much of its length, this extra toe was separate from the central toe, bore its own long hoof, and actually made contact with the ground, so that each forefoot appeared double. This explained Clique's 'six-footed' appellation, because on first sight he seemed to possess two hind feet and four forefeet. In addition, close observations revealed that another supernumerary toe was represented by a splint-like structure on the outer side of the central toe on each of Clique's forefeet, whereas just under the skin in the locality of the ancestral pollex a similar splint could be felt that corresponded to a fourth toe!

Even more remarkable than Clique, however, though less famous, was a so-called 'eight-footed' Cuban horse depicted in Marsh's paper and reproduced below here in the present ShukerNature post, which gained its name from the fact that all four of its feet each bore a well-developed second toe on the inner side of the normal central toe, one again bearing its own hoof and making contact with the ground alongside the latter.

Line drawing of the 'eight-footed' Cuban horse examined by Prof. Othniel C. Marsh

This horse, a male, was on exhibition in New Orleans during spring 1878, and it was Dr Sanford E. Chaillé from that city who drew Prof. Marsh's attention to it. The horse was subsequently brought to the North, and a few days later was displayed at New Haven, Connecticut, where Marsh closely examined it.

As with the occasional reappearance of dew-claws on the hind feet of dogs, polydactyly in horses involves the redevelopment of toes normally absent in modern-day species but present in ancestral ones (rather than simply involving the duplication of existing toes, as occurring, for example, in polydactylous humans and cats). A plausible explanation for this type of polydactyly is that during the evolution of the horse, the genes responsible for the formation of all toes other than the central one became increasingly repressed by other genes, whereas those responsible for the central toe actually intensified their activity, so that eventually the latter was the only toe that was 'permitted' to form. Applying this theory to modern-day polydactylous horses, it could be argued that during their embryonic development something goes wrong with the repression mechanism acting upon the genes responsible for the formation of those ancestral toes, so that it fails to operate, with the result that these ostensibly 'lost' toes reappear - conjured forth as if by magic from their prehistoric past.

Painting of the supposed eight-footed horse owned by Mark Sittich von Hohenems, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg (© Curious Expeditions/Flickr)

According to a very beautiful colour painting portraying it (above), a bona fide eight-footed horse (i.e. one that possessed two entirely separate feet on each leg, not just supernumerary toes) was owned by Mark Sittich von Hohenems, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg (1574-1619), who was renowed for his collection of rare and unusual animals. The horse had been obtained in Arabia, each of its alleged eight feet possessed its own horseshoe in the painting, and the painting itself is on public display at the Palace Helbrunn (now a museum), situated between Salzburg and Untersberg, Austria. Whether or not the horse was truly eight-footed, however, or whether the painting is merely a very imaginative depiction of a horned horse comparable to the Cuban specimen documented earlier here, is unknown.

Whenever talking about eight-footed horses, one cannot help but be tempted to think of Norse mythology and Odin's famous eight-footed steed, Sleipnir – but there was one fundamental difference between Sleipnir and the horned horses documented here. Not only did Sleipnir have eight fully-formed feet (not just extra toes that looked a little like extra feet), he also had eight legs!

Odin riding Sleipnir (W.G. Collingwood)

One last comment, just to add a further level of confusion to horses with horns and horned horses: sometimes, again most especially in sideshows, circuses, and suchlike, 'horned horse' is a term that has been applied to a gnu or wildebeest – this large African antelope (which actually constitutes two very closely-related species) does look superficially equine but possesses a pair of very noticeable horns.

A white-tailed (aka black) gnu Connochaetes gnou, one of two antelopine 'horned horses' (public domain)