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A look at the lighter
side of the news & life |
Monday, 28 June 2004 |
Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog'An
Iranian newspaper has reported the controversial story of a
woman who claims to have given birth to a frog.
The
Iranian daily Etemaad says the creature is believed to have
grown from larva to an adult frog inside her
body.
While it is unclear how this could have happened,
the paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there
are human characteristics to the animal.
It has been
speculated that the woman, who has not been named, unknowingly
picked up the larva while she was swimming in a dirty
pool.
The woman, from the south-eastern city of
Iranshahr, is a mother of two children.
The "so-called
frog", as the newspaper puts it, has yet to undergo precise
genetic and anatomic tests.
But it quotes clinical
biology expert Dr Aminifard as saying: "The similarities are
in appearance, the shape of the fingers and the size and shape
of the tongue."
Medical history recounts stories of
people who believed they had frogs - or even lizards or snakes
- living and growing in their bodies.
One of the most
famous was the 17th Century case of Catharina Geisslerin,
known as "the toad-vomiting woman" of Germany.
When she
died in 1662 doctors are said to have performed an autopsy,
but found no evidence animals had ever lived inside her
body.
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern
England, selects and translates information from radio,
television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150
countries in more than 70 languages.
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