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Aborted Sheep with human face ???

Rolfe said:
I just clicked on that. That's an amazing poem, incredible. I love it!
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Isn't it something! Unfortunately, there aren't many conversations where it just naturally fits with the main topic. :boggled: So when a chance comes up, I make sure to post it.
 
OK, looks pretty weird to me. I'd love to see a DNA analysis. I'd be more than convinced it was paradelia if there was DNA that suggested so.

OTOH, human to sheep sex is not exactly unheard of and neither are unviable offspring of mixed species unions.

Just saying... what does the evidence actually support?
 
skeptigirl said:
OK, looks pretty weird to me. I'd love to see a DNA analysis. I'd be more than convinced it was paradelia if there was DNA that suggested so.

OTOH, human to sheep sex is not exactly unheard of and neither are unviable offspring of mixed species unions.

Just saying... what does the evidence actually support?
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Doesn't look especially weird to me at all, and as I said, we get scores of aborted ovine foetuses in here every spring for examination. I'd be extremely surprised if there was any genetic abnormality involved.

Rolfe.
 
skeptigirl said:
OK, looks pretty weird to me. I'd love to see a DNA analysis. I'd be more than convinced it was paradelia if there was DNA that suggested so.

OTOH, human to sheep sex is not exactly unheard of and neither are unviable offspring of mixed species unions.

Just saying... what does the evidence actually support?
Click to expand...

:wide-eyed Are you seriously suggesting that this might actually be a human-sheep hybrid, or did I totally miss the sarcasm or humor?

At the risk of being humor-impaired this morning...

Check out the second photo in the link that ElMondoHummus posted:

http://www.today.az/news/turkey/59237.html

It shows a lot more context of how the lower jaw is deformed and looks a lot less human.

But think about this. We're not talking about an interspecies breeding, or even an intergenus breeding. It would be an interorder breeding. If that's possible, there must be dozens more of the easier intergenus pairings, considering how many barnyard animals have access to each other. Where are all the cow-sheep crosses? If interorder breeding is possible, what about the cow-horse crosses or the horse-pig crosses, or...?

Even besides all the problems with proteins and chromosomes, what are the odds that a sheep-human hybrid would just happen to be born with an adult human face on a lamb's body? The face doesn't even look like a human fetus's face.

But of course it's exactly how we've imagined human-animal crosses for centuries, from mermaids to minotaurs--a fully formed recognizable part of each species combined at some neat juncture line. The paradelia is strong with this one. Except rather than reaching for the ready-made mythological explanation that Jesus used his supernatural powers to place his image on a piece of toast, it's the ready-made explanation that if an animal looks superficially like another species, it must be a biological cross with that species. And of course, that's the powerful myth that the James Dickey poem plays with.
 
What Pup said. It hadn't occurred to me that Skeptigirl was making a serious suggestion of hybridisation, but if she was, well....

:hb:

Rolfe.
 
Yeah, I wouldn't even use Pravda to light a fire with, it's that bad. You might want to get a better source next time.
 
Rolfe said:
it's not that hard for a face to look like a face.
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Indeed. Given the variety of places people tend to see faces, seeing a face on a face has to be one of the least remarkable things that has ever happened.
 
Pup said:
Check out the second photo in the link that ElMondoHummus posted:

http://www.today.az/news/turkey/59237.html

It shows a lot more context of how the lower jaw is deformed and looks a lot less human.
Click to expand...


Actually, enlarge that. It shows the silliness of getting aerated about a single snapshot from a single angle.

I don't think the foetus is even deformed, in the usual sense of the term. It's mostly fluid - oedema. It looks like a lamb that was hung at the head, with the circulation restricted. It's possible that was actually the case, but the caesarian had to be done because the shoulders wouldn't come through. Most such malpresentations can be manually corrected, however if the head was very oedematous (as it seems to have been) it could have been impossible to push that back inside to sort out the legs. It's really just the oedema under the lower jaw appearing to give the thing a chin that gives the "human" impression. I've seen lambs a lot more deformed-looking than that, which turned out to be essentially normal when dissected - just kneaded-up kind of funny by the birth process and dystocia.

I wonder why the vet is going along with it at all? I appreciate he said something about hypervitaminosis A, so he seems to be going for a rational explanation, but that's really bunk because vitamin A causes excess bone formation and there's no sign of that (and I don't know that it does it in the foetus anyway).

I suspect the farmer could see the lamb's head while the lambing was in progress - as I said, I think the head alone was presented. and then it hung because the legs were back, and the head swelled with oedema. So I suspect the farmer of starting it. But instead of pointing out how silly this is, the vet is posing for press photos with the thing.

Oh dear.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
To find out the cause of the abortion, so that the problem can be addressed.
Chlamydophila ovis
Toxoplasma gondii
Salmonella dublin
Management/mothering issues
Other stuff

Some farmers will bring the first abortion in, saying "it's probably just one of those things, but just in case it's the start of something...." Others wait till they simply can't ignore the pile of dead lambs any longer. But this is their crop. They need to know what's causing any excessive losses.

You can vaccinate against Chlamydophila (EAE) and Toxoplasma, so if you have one of these you know what to do for next year at least.

Rolfe.
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Thanks for the info! That's pretty interesting, I'd never really thought about it before. I spend most of my time figuring out why technology doesn't work, not biology. :)

Is there a reason not to vaccinate all the sheep? An expense thing, or just rarely necessary? For that matter, are sheep the major livestock in the UK? I don't think I've ever seen a sheep farm in the US, though I assume they're around (mostly cattle around here).

As to the vet in the OP... well, there are worse ways to get your 5 minutes of fame. :)
 
There are an awful lot of sheep in Scotland....

Many people vaccinate routinely, but if the pathogen is thought not to be present locally or they've never had a problem before, they may decide it's not worth the expense. Also, people are especially anxious to know what's causing a problem in a vaccinated flock.

EAE used to be extraordinarily common round here, but thanks to a combination of vaccination and a health scheme run by our lab, we see much less of it. It's getting to the point where some farms know they don't have it and neither do their neighbours, so they don't vaccinate, and then they let their guard down, and trouble ensues.

Toxoplasma is an especially sneaky organism and it will always be with us so long as we have cats. It's amazing how widespread it is considering how little opportunity it gives itself to be passed on, but basically don't let your farm cats crap near your sheep feed store or in the fields.

Bacteria can cause all sorts of grief - I had an outbreak due to Clostridium sordellii, and you should have seen the shape of these lambs, given that the organism is a gas-producer. I also had an outbreak associated with Pasteurella multocida which was odd because that's usually a sporadic one-off. And like I said, Salmonella can be a nasty.

They do all have rather different presenting signs, but still, you usually have to wait for the test results to be sure and sometimes you get a surprise.

Maybe the vet just wanted his picture in the paper. It's a pretty unremarkable lamb, really.

But the poem was great.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Sorry, but why?

It's an aborted sheep foetus. Trust me, any veterinary investigation centre has these coming out of its ears at lambing time. We get a diagnosis in about 80% of submissions, the other 20% are mostly in the category of "just one of those things".

Cranial deformities are nothing particularly unusual. I had one with hydrocephalus last spring. Jaw abnormalities are also fairly usual. There are also quite a few where there is no real deformity but the skull has become misshapen during a difficult birth, either because the cranial sutures, which are of course not fused, are misaligned, or because the head has swelled up with fluid due to malpresentation. (This looks a bit like a combination of these factors to me, though as it was a caesarian I'm not sure that the head would have been hung, which is what it actually looks like.)

Studying this one particularly, just because somebody has sold its story to the papers on the basis that they think the malformed head looks a bit human, would be a complete waste of resources. It only hit the press because it happened among superstitious and uneducated people. If it had happened here, someone might have remarked, well, look at that then, before consigning it to the bucket with the other 25 we'd examined that day.




Er, what are you sceptical of? It's an ovine foetus which is mis-shapen in such a way that someone thought the head looked a bit human. It's along the same lines as the cheese toastie with the figure of the Virgin Mary on it. What's to be sceptical of?

Rolfe.
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Rolfe, you're the vet so I should bow to you, but my original reasoning was the source of the story. Pravda is known for fake stories with photoshoped pictures. This one looked photoshoped to me. The 'Vet' is not holding the head, but seems to be holding only the 'ears' behind the head. I was thinking this could mean that the head was added, or manipulated, and placed on top of the original picture.

I thought, and this is where you have corrected me, that there would be an autopsy done to figure out what caused the deformity. It seemed highly unusual and if it were me, I'd really want to find out the cause.

I also thought it was highly improbable for a deformity in a sheep to cause what looks like a 'human' nose, leading me to believe that it was photoshoped.

However, if you really think that this type of deformity is not that impossible, I stand corrected. I just wish it wasn't from this publication that specializes in fake 'news' stories.
 
Skeptic Guy said:
I also thought it was highly improbable for a deformity in a sheep to cause what looks like a 'human' nose, leading me to believe that it was photoshoped.

However, if you really think that this type of deformity is not that impossible, I stand corrected. I just wish it wasn't from this publication that specializes in fake 'news' stories.
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I don't know about photoshopping (when did that become a verb?) but in all the published pics the lamb is being held directly toards the camera in a way that would maximise the foreshortening of the muzzle and enhance the resemblance to a human. A simple 'side on' photo would be very enlightening - but I bet they're not going to go for enlightening ;).

Yuri
 
Skeptic Guy said:
Rolfe, you're the vet so I should bow to you, but my original reasoning was the source of the story. Pravda is known for fake stories with photoshoped pictures. This one looked photoshoped to me. The 'Vet' is not holding the head, but seems to be holding only the 'ears' behind the head. I was thinking this could mean that the head was added, or manipulated, and placed on top of the original picture.

I thought, and this is where you have corrected me, that there would be an autopsy done to figure out what caused the deformity. It seemed highly unusual and if it were me, I'd really want to find out the cause.

I also thought it was highly improbable for a deformity in a sheep to cause what looks like a 'human' nose, leading me to believe that it was photoshoped.

However, if you really think that this type of deformity is not that impossible, I stand corrected. I just wish it wasn't from this publication that specializes in fake 'news' stories.
Click to expand...


What Yuri said. The pictures have been taken at an angle to maximise this "OMG it's human!" story. I'd put a fair-sized bet on that even a quick superficial examination of the actual specimen would demonstrate that the resemblance is mostly imaginary.

I'd even put a small bet on there being no actual deformity in the real sense of the word, merely a combination of oedema and a bit of squashing. I couldn't tell you the number of times I've looked at an aborted lamb and thought there was some interesting malformation, then on closer examination realised that's all it was.

I'm honestly not seeing the "human nose". Maybe it's because I'm used to looking at the faces of stillborn lambs, but I see the lamb there, and any resemblance to human features is just coincidence, reinforced by the way the picture has been taken.

I wouldn't know if it was photoshopped or not, but I don't see any reason why it should be. The "autopsy" is a 15-minute job before coffee break, take standard samples for ovine abortion profile, do we want the brain, oh well OK then, done and dusted.

And at the risk of indulging in armchair diagnosis, I'd expect to be ticking the "dystocia" box when I finalised the submission.

Rolfe.
 
Pup said:
:wide-eyed Are you seriously suggesting that this might actually be a human-sheep hybrid, or did I totally miss the sarcasm or humor?

At the risk of being humor-impaired this morning...

Check out the second photo in the link that ElMondoHummus posted:

http://www.today.az/news/turkey/59237.html

It shows a lot more context of how the lower jaw is deformed and looks a lot less human.

But think about this. We're not talking about an interspecies breeding, or even an intergenus breeding. It would be an interorder breeding. If that's possible, there must be dozens more of the easier intergenus pairings, considering how many barnyard animals have access to each other. Where are all the cow-sheep crosses? If interorder breeding is possible, what about the cow-horse crosses or the horse-pig crosses, or...?

Even besides all the problems with proteins and chromosomes, what are the odds that a sheep-human hybrid would just happen to be born with an adult human face on a lamb's body? The face doesn't even look like a human fetus's face.

But of course it's exactly how we've imagined human-animal crosses for centuries, from mermaids to minotaurs--a fully formed recognizable part of each species combined at some neat juncture line. The paradelia is strong with this one. Except rather than reaching for the ready-made mythological explanation that Jesus used his supernatural powers to place his image on a piece of toast, it's the ready-made explanation that if an animal looks superficially like another species, it must be a biological cross with that species. And of course, that's the powerful myth that the James Dickey poem plays with.
Click to expand...

Rolfe said:
What Pup said. It hadn't occurred to me that Skeptigirl was making a serious suggestion of hybridisation, but if she was, well....

:hb:

Rolfe.
Click to expand...

Oh, she's gotta be joking.

Rolfe said:
Actually, enlarge that. It shows the silliness of getting aerated about a single snapshot from a single angle.

I don't think the foetus is even deformed, in the usual sense of the term. It's mostly fluid - oedema. It looks like a lamb that was hung at the head, with the circulation restricted. It's possible that was actually the case, but the caesarian had to be done because the shoulders wouldn't come through. Most such malpresentations can be manually corrected, however if the head was very oedematous (as it seems to have been) it could have been impossible to push that back inside to sort out the legs. It's really just the oedema under the lower jaw appearing to give the thing a chin that gives the "human" impression. I've seen lambs a lot more deformed-looking than that, which turned out to be essentially normal when dissected - just kneaded-up kind of funny by the birth process and dystocia.
Click to expand...

Yes, that was my whole point in posting that link. Really, most of the "human face" ringamarole was due to the angle of the photo. You can click on the second photo in that link and see it larger; honestly, the angle plus holding the head of the dead sheep differently makes all the difference in the world. It doesn't look so human in the second image.

But it does sorta look like a pig to me... OMG!!!11! SHEEP-PIG HYBRID!!! :eek:

OH NOOOOOOOOOOES!!!!
Arrrrrrrrrrgh.jpg



;)
 
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My son reckons he's seen the picture somewhere before:



There you are, the Prodigy predicted this weird event - the deeply strange Voodoo People is one of their best known tracks rather appropriately.

Yuri
 
Yikes, there's a third photo of this poor little lamb.

God how I feel for it. :(


2b2.jpg
 
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