Just imagine your surprise upon unwrapping a frozen chicken–with four legs!
Xiaoying Tian purchased the chicken from her local supermarket for dinner. Right after unwrapping the frozen chicken, she noticed that it had two additional but slightly smaller legs attached to it.
Horrified, she hesitated to cook the chicken. “I dare not eat it,” Tian said, and added that she would dispose it immediately.
Despite this, a top university professor in the country said that the chicken would have been perfectly edible, and was harmless.
Professor Anping Li of Central South University of Forestry and Technology said: “The chicken embryo may have been affected by different kinds of factors such a radioactivity, and developed a deformation.”
This condition is called polymelia, a birth defect in which the affected individual grows more than the usual number of limbs.
Nobody was able to trace the source of the chicken, but both the supermarket and the supplier said they would be investigating it.
It may sound weird, but this is not the first time that a four-legged chicken has made the headlines. In 2005, a live four-legged chicken was found among 36,000 other birds at a farm in the United States. Henrietta, as she became known, managed to go unnoticed for 18 months at Brendle Farms in Somerset, Pennsylvania, but was later discovered by a foreman. Farmer Mark Brendle’s 13-year-old daughter named the chicken and asked to keep it as a family pet. The bird had two normal front legs, but behind those were two more that dragged behind when Henrietta walked.
A university professor at the time likened the development to that of a sixth toe on a cat and said there was no definitive reason as to why these things happen.
