Take a look at this picture. Is it real or fake? It kind of looks like two cats held up one behind the other. But it's not. The picture is real.
It's Octopussy, the 8-legged cat. It's a cat that was born in Norway in 2001. Information about it can be found over at
Messybeast.com:
In 2001, I received an email detailing a conjoined kitten which was born in Østfold, Norway in April. Unlike the 1750 six-legged cat which was only doubled from the "waist" down, the Norwegian kitten was doubled from the neck down. It had eight paws, two tails and two chins and was part of a litter of six. The other 5 kittens were normal. The conjoined kitten died shortly after birth, which is not unusual for such grossly malformed offspring. The image indicates two tortoiseshell and white female kittens (incompletely separated twins) which were joined at the belly and which would have shared most of their internal organs. Had such a severely deformed kitten survived, such a gross deformity would have severely compromised its lifestyle and mobility.
Update: I really messed up on my first attempt at this post (I was writing it late at night), confusing the Norwegian cat with an American-born 8-legged cat called Octopussy. Part of the Octopussy story
can be found here.
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In various museums I've seen stuffed or pickled two-headed calves, five-legged goats, four-winged chickens, and so on.
One "monstrosity" that is rather common, and probably not harmful to the animal, is extra toes (not whole extra legs) in cats (I think "polydactylism" is the medical term for this trait). I have seen several living examples of such cats, with seven or more toes on each paw (normal is five on each front paw and four on each hind paw). They look as if they're wearing catcher's mitts, but they don't seem to be impaired in any way. Sometimes the pads (the "palms" of the paws) are partly or entirely doubled as well. Some people hold that having such a cat as a pet brings good luck.
Polydactylism also occurs occasionally in humans, but it is usually surgically "corrected" early in life.
The Freakatorium in New York City (a place every fan of the Museum of Hoaxes should visit!) has a live two-headed turtle in an aquarium. Its name is Frick and Frack, and I saw it with my own eyes in June 2004. It appears normal in every way, except that it has two fully-formed, and apparently fully functional, heads. When I saw Frick and Frack, he? she? they? was/were doing all the usual turtle things, pausing now and then to look in different directions simultaneously with his? her? their? two heads.
Also, I went to school with a guy that was born with 6 fingers on each hand. One had a bone but the other didn't. The extra fingers were amputated when he was tiny but you could see the scars on his hand and the hand that had the finger with the bone you could still see the knuckle. Kinda cool 😊