Polymelia
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Polymelia (from Greek πολυ- = "many" plus μέλος (plural μέλεα) = "limb") is a birth defect involving limbs (a type of dysmelia), in which the affected individual has more than the usual number of limbs. In humans and most land-dwelling animals, this means having five or more limbs. The extra limb is most commonly shrunken and/or deformed.
Sometimes an embryo started as conjoined twins, but one twin degenerated completely except for one or more limbs, which end up attached to the other twin.
Sometimes small extra legs between the normal legs are caused by the body axis forking in the dipygus condition.
Frogs in the USA sometimes are affected by polymelia: see Ribeiroia.
[edit] Notable cases
[edit] In humans
- In March 2006, a baby boy identified only as Jie-jie was born in Shanghai with a fully formed third arm: he had two full-sized left arms, one ventral to the other. This is the only documented case of a child born with a fully formed supernumerary arm. It is an example of an extra limb on a normal body axis. [2]
- In the summer of 2005, a baby girl named Destiny was born with a fully formed extra leg in Detroit. This was the result of a conjoined twin scenario.
- In July 2007 a child was born with four legs at the Lebowakgomo hospital outside Polokwane (South Africa) [3]
- On November 6 2007, doctors at Bangalore's Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, India successfully completed surgery on a 2 year old girl named Lakshmi Tatma who was born with 4 arms and 4 legs; but this was not true polymelia but a case of ischiopagus Siamese twinning where one twin's head had disappeared during development.
[edit] In animals
- A four-legged chicken was born at Brendle Farms in Somerset, Pennsylvania, in 2005.[1] The story was carried on the major TV network news programs and USAToday. The bird was found living normally among the rest of the chickens after 18 months. She was adopted and named Henrietta by the farm owner's 13 year old daughter, Ashley, who refuses to sell the chicken.[2] The second (hind) legs are fully formed but non-functional.
- Four-legged ducks are occasionally born, such as 'Stumpy', an individual born in February 2007 on a farm in Hampshire, England. See also [4].
[edit] In popular culture
- Edward Albee's stage play The Man Who Had Three Arms tells the rather unusual story of a fictional individual who was normal at birth but eventually sprouted a third functional arm, protruding from between his shoulder blades. After several years of living with three arms, the extra limb was reabsorbed into his body and the man is now physically normal again. In Albee's play, the title character is extremely angry that we (the audience) seem to be much more interested in the period of his life when he had three arms, rather than his normal life before and after that interval.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus performed a skit about a man with three buttocks. (This defect is scientifically possible, though very unlikely.) He believes that he has been invited to be interviewed on television because he is a nice person, and is dismayed to learn that he has only been invited because the interviewer is curious about his freakish condition.
- Jake the Peg was a fictional three-legged man, played by Rolf Harris in the 1960s. The song was written in 1966 with Frank Roosen, a Dutchman in Vancouver, Canada.
- The Dark Backward is a 1991 comedy film directed and written by Adam Rifkin, which features, Judd Nelson as a unfunny garbage man that pursues stand-up comedy career. When the "comedian" grows a third arm out of his back, he becomes an overnight hit.
[edit] See also
- Dysmelia
- Polydactyly
- Polysyndactyly
- Polycephaly
[edit] References
- Avian Diseases, 1985 Jan-Mar;29(1):244-5. Polymelia in a broiler chicken., Anderson WI, Langheinrich KA, McCaskey PC.: "A polymelus monster was observed in a 7-week-old slaughterhouse chicken. The supernumerary limbs were smaller than the normal appendages but contained an equal number of digits.".
[edit] External links
- Four-legged duckling shocks owner — BBC News, 17 February 2007
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