Rabbit with horns - a myth explained
- The story also says that the first animal was seen in 1829, near the village Douglas of the U.S. state of Wyoming. In the 1930s, Jackalope began to be known throughout the country because Herrick brothers, two taxidermy (ie specialists "împ?ierea" or naturalized animals) of Douglas, who combined heads of rabbits with antlers and have them mounted as some hunting trophies, selling them as "heads Jackalope". Douglas town remained faithful to this day legend rabbit with horns: there is a statue of Jackalope, is an annual celebration dedicated to celebrating, sell postcards and stamps, posters, key chains and mugs, shirts and all kinds of promotional items eared and horned animal picture, there are trophies Jackalope (as authentic as those made ??by Herrick brothers) exhibited bars, and people are having fun at the expense of ignorant and gullible tourists, listening open-mouthed celebrity stories of local fauna - amazing rabbit with horns.
Photo: Rich Anderson , CC BY-SA 2.0 - Mythological references to such animals, however, are the oldest and most popular, surpassing "folklore" of the twentieth century in Douglas, Wyoming. Huichol tribe of Native American legends speak of an exchange between rabbit and deer horns, and even older stories, from the time of the Aztecs, rabbit and deer pair often appear as siblings, even twins.
Sirens, grifonii, centaurs and satyrs, Sphinx and Triton Greek legends, Garuda man's body and wings with Kite in Hindu mythology, are all examples of huge gallery of fabulous animals, invented by ancient people for whom nothing seemed impossible, since their realization of explaining everything as atotoputernice entities. For them, those beings or forces which had created common animals could easily have created and lions with wings, creatures half man-half horse or head and torso of a woman with a fish tail extended.And then, why would not there and rabbits with horns? Jackalope, rabbit with horns of America, is also a copy of this collection consists of the imagination - the real force atotcreatoare and powerful. - Reflecting the knowledge in those times, even in old zoology treated (one in 1575 and another in 1789 ...) appear serious references in rabbits with horns, including naturalists weather in fauna real world.
- And to honor the importance of these animals in European culture, Hunting and Fishing Museum in Munich, Germany, are exposed more taxidermy creations embodying chimeras, thus evoking German fairytales and legends.
However, what about the rabbit with horns?He's a legend, of course. However, if you poke well in its core find a shred of truth, a small real fact on which the dense fabric of inventions, additions, embellishments ... And all from this spark of truth can build a rational explanation. Many experts are now of the opinion that the foundation myth horned rabbits they are ... a virus.Phylogenetic distance between viruses and mammalian one be it high, but there's no doubt that the two groups being very close links exist. Virology (or virology, as he was called by the older term) is a very new discipline compared in zoology, has hardly any century of existence, so we can say that we are just starting to dig into the vast amount of knowledge about viruses, I just started to learn something about them. And viruses are so special, so different from other creatures, that we learn almost nothing about them should not surprise us, really.But back in rabbits with horns. Involvement of viruses in the legend theory is presented, among others, by Carl Zimmer - a famous American writer, specialist in popularizing science - in his book A Planet of Viruses.It's about a virus called Shope papilloma virus , or CRPV ( cottontail rabbit papilloma virus ).In some species of rabbits, as rabbits Americans genus Sylvilagus , with CRPV causes skin infection, especially of the head, tumors keratin (keratin is a protein produced by the skin, which are formed in birds and mammals , feathers and hair, nails, claws, as the top layer of skin.) These tumors can sometimes be eliminated or limited to the development of the immune system, but sometimes, when the body's immune defense is exceeded, can greatly increase, gaining in some cases the appearance of horns, giving an appearance of strange animals and affecting their lifestyleIn the pictures below, also see a rabbit infected with CRPV and had his horn-shaped tumors grown down from the mouth (and most likely hinder feeding them). Imagine, now, that such party would not appear in the mouth, but the head, crown, obviously growing up, and you have the image of a "horned rabbit" - a very plausible explanation of apparitions known as Jackalope !
( Here you can see the other two photos even more enlightening .) But why is called papillomavirus (s) shop?Shope (Richard Edwin) is the name of an American virologist who, in the 1930s, while working at the Rockefeller Institute, has managed to establish contact between rabbits with horns and infection. Heard about these animals from hunters managed to get a copy with strange growths - like shapeless horns - and somehow suspected that it could be a viral infection. A colleague of his, Francis Peyton Rous, had previously chickens, some experiments have suggested that certain viruses may cause tumors. (Actually, first discovered oncovirus known people - of Rous sarcoma virus .) Today, no biologist or doctor no longer surprised to hear that viruses can cause cancer or benign tumors, but at that time such an idea was a great novelty and many scientists regarded it with skepticism.
Richard E. Shope (left), Francis Peyton Rous (right)Following the techniques commonly used in the profession, Shop strange ground portions of rabbit tumor then dispersed material in a special solution, which passed it through a porcelain filter that would make only passing viruses (which generally were very small compared to microscopic bacteria or fungi).Filtrate respectively applied to the head of laboratory rabbits and ... surprise! They have appeared after a while, some "cresc?turi" like those of rabbits with horns about telling hunters.Described as, on several occasions, the experiment does not seem much, but in fact, is something quite remarkable. As Carl Zimmer points, Shope's experiments showed that not only bizarre growths viruses, but have shown that infection with these viruses produced the appearance of these tumors in other words, a proven causal link between the virus and the "horns".After that, Shope took up other urgent projects (working on research on influenza virus and, together with other specialists demonstrated a subtype of the virus that caused the 1918 pandemic, the so-called Spanish flu, which killed 20 million people.) gave all the material related to study his fellow rabbits Rous, who continued to study oncovirusurile for decades. Among other things, investigated the effect of internal infections found Shope virus, injecting laboratory rabbits solution containing viral particles. He found that in this case no tumors appeared in the form of horns, but internal cancerous tumors, aggressive animals killed. He sat thus on solid study the link between cancer and certain viruses - discipline now called viral oncology - and for all the work in this area, which was one of the founders, received in 1966 the Nobel Prize in Physiology / Medicine .Shope's footsteps and of Rous, other scientists have started to study the relationship between viruses and cancer. To them we owe the discovery that some human suffering caused by tumors originate in an infection with a virus, related to CRPV.It's about a "good" acquaintance of ours (although nobody wants to have anything to do with it):human papilloma virus (HPV-Human Papilloma Virus) , one of many oncovirusuri discovered in the twentieth century.In humans, it is well-known cause of warts , skin growths horny sometimes taking monstrous forms, as in "man-tree" in Indonesia . But all the people, certain strains of human papilloma virus (known more than a hundred) trigger cervical cancer , which kills more than a quarter million women each year worldwide. HPV infection generally causes - if the immune system fails to successfully oppose - massive proliferation of cells at the site of infection, leading, in terms of location, the appearance of warts (small benign skin tumors) or cancerous tumors ucig?toarelor uterus. As it turns out, is a virus with lots of "skills" and can induce different effects depending on the body region where infection occurs and defense power of the infected person's immune system.And thus, from some bizarre stories about animals hunting, it was scientific discoveries that changed the world. Oncology virus emerges rapidly, counting among its recent successes including obtaining vaccines capable of preventing the genesis of tumors when infected with certain strains of oncogenic viruses (such as strains of HPV involved in cervical cancer). Virology, in general, is "the wave" recent research (and receiving huge progress of genetics in recent decades) reveal surprising aspects of the world of viruses, and that these entities, long considered harmful only human, could have, in fact, more complex involvement in human health , can contribute essential (as we do not know yet) in our physiological wellbeing.It's one of the reasons always worth seeking scientific explanations, rational of things understood, as did Richard Shope, who did not accept the naive idea that there is some strange animals unknown to zoology, was not content to believe that rabbits with horns are fabrications hunting, but started to investigate that the means of science and thus managed to strengthen the foundations of scientific disciplines that just being born and since then has evolved dramatically, to the benefit of all humanity.
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