It has been nicknamed 'the cyclops' after the one eyed-giants of Ancient Greek mythology. The foal was born last summer to a farmer in Zealand, Denmark, died immediately after birth, and was offered to the department.
The department severed the head and has plans to display it. In this animal, the eye has two pupils. "It is a fusion of two eyes - so it contain two of several things including the pupils," Professor Henrik Elvang Jensen explains.
The department does not know what caused the eye defect in this foal. The department’s specimen collection also contains another one-eyed foal and a pig. And a four-legged duck. But this is the first cyclops specimen to appear in 30 years.
2 comments:
"The department does not know what caused the eye defect in this foal."
I'm no zoopathology specialist, but it looks like a generally too-thin too-short head to me, which implies that the genes for bone-formation of the maxillae and cranium have been insufficiently active to generate the usual head shape, which would accommodate two separate eye sockets, and thereby two separate eyes. With so little room for brain-matter too, i'm not surprised to read that cyclopses don't survive without their maternal host.
BTW, did you know that the idea of a human cyclops is thought to derive from the skulls of pygmy elephants, scattered around Mediterranean islands? Local humans supposedly mistook the cranial hole where the trunk attaches, for a single huge eye socket. Having never seen a living elephant, they would have drawn on concepts already familiar to them - 'one-eyed' blacksmiths - who wore a patch over one eye, to spare them from total blindness, in case of accident. Et voila - the idea of a giant, one-eyed man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclops
Funny enough, this birth defect is called cyclopia. It is often accompanied by either a lack of a nose, or an unformed nose located above the one eye. As previously mentioned, it's due to a lack of seperation of the proto-brain.
Interestingly, it's been noted not only in humans, kittens, dogs and farm mammals, but even sharks and chickens.
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