Tag Archives: farfalla

Links, Curiosities & Mixed Wonders – 26

Welcome to this Easter edition of the column that collects various treats and bizarre delicacies from the internet. Depicted above is a party I’d really feel comfortable, painted by an anonymous seventeenth-century Tuscan artist.
And we’re off and running!

  • Let us begin with a short collection of last words spoken on the guillotine stage.
  • And here is a bridge of ants.
  • During the work to rebuild the Notre-Dame Cathedral, after a fire devastated it three years ago, a mysterious leaden sarcophagus was unearthed. The casket in all probability dates back to the 14th century, and it will be opened shortly: who knows if it contains a hunchbacked skeleton.
  • How would you react if, searching for your home on Google Street View, you saw mom and dad sitting on the porch… who have been dead for years? Would that image distress you, make you suffer? Or, on the contrary, would you look at it with emotion and affection, because that picture still makes you feel close to them? Would you ask Google to remove the image, or keep it forever in memory? With the growth of Street View, this sort of thing is happening more and more often, and it’s just one of the many ways the internet is changing grief processing.

  • The gentleman above is one of the founding fathers of the United States, Gouverneur Morris, who had a particularly odd and eventful life: at the age of 28 he was run over by a carriage and lost a leg; he later helped write the Constitution, then was sent to France where he had a string of lovers and managed to escape the Revolution unscathed. Back in the US, he finally decided to put his head straight and marry Ann Cary Randolph, his housekeeper, who incidentally some years before had been accused of infanticide. In short, how could such a man close his existence with a flourish? In 1816 Gouverneur Morris, who suffered from prostate, died as a result of internal injuries caused by self-surgery: in an attempt to unblock the urinary tract, he had used a whale bone as an improvised catheter. (Thanks, Bruno!)
  • Ten years ago I posted an article (Italian only)  about the Dylatov Pass incident, one of the longest-running historical mysteries. In 2021, two Swiss researchers published on Nature a study that would seem to be, so far, the most scientifically plausible explanation for the 1959 tragedy: the climbers could have been killed by a violent and anomalous avalanche. Due possibly to the boredom of last year’s lockdown, this theory did once again trigger the press, social media, conspiracy theorists, romantic fans of the abominable snowmen, and so on. Before long, the two researchers found themselves inundated with interview requests. They therefore performed three new expeditions to Dylatov Pass and published a second study in which, in addition to confirming their previous findings, they also report in an amused tone about the media attention they received and the social impact of their publication.
  • An autopsy was held last October in Portland in front of a paying audience. The great Cat Irvin, who is curator of anatomical collections at the Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh, was interviewed on the ethical implications of pay-per-view autopsies. (Cat also runs a beautiful blog called Wandering Bones, and you can find her on Instagram and Twitter)
  • Below, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria dressed as a mummy for a souvenir photo, (circa 1895). Via Thanatos Archive.

  • If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? What if a bear plays the piano in an empty house?
  • A tweet that offers a novel (and, frankly, kind of gross) perspective on our skeleton.
  • On April 22, 1969, the most hallucinatory and shocking opera of all time was staged at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall: Eight Songs for a Mad King, by Peter Maxwell Davies. The protagonist of the drama is King George III, who suffered from an acute mental illness: consequently, the entire composition is intended to be a depiction of the schizophrenic cacophony inside his head. The six musicians (flute, clarinet, percussion, piano/harpsichord, violin and cello) played inside gigantic birdcages; interpreting the verses, the cries and the sudden changes of mood of the mad King, was a baritone with 5 octaves of extension (!) dressed in a straitjacket. The opera, lasting half an hour, was a completely unprecedented assault on conventional rules, as well as on the ears of the spectators who had certainly never heard anything like it: the one-act play culminated in the moment when the king stole the violin from the player and tore it to pieces. If you have 28 minutes and want to try your hand at this disturbing representation of madness — a unique example of classical punk music, at least for its attitude — here is a 2012 video in which the solo part is played by Kelvin Thomas who, at the time of filming, was 92 years old.

Now, two pieces of slightly more personal news.
The first is that my upcoming online lecture (in English) for Morbid Anatomy will take place on May 14, and will focus on the cult of the dead in Naples.
Info and tickets here.

Secondly, if you can read Italian, I would like to remind you that the Almanacco dell’Italia occulta, edited by Fabrizio Foni and Fabio Camilletti, has been published by Odoya: following the line of the previous Almanacco dell’orrore popolare, this volume collects several contributions by different authors. If the first book, however, focused on the rural dimension of our country, this new anthology examines the urban context, exploring its hidden, fantastic and “lunar” face. Among the essays by more than 20 authors included in the Almanacco there is also my study of the weirdest, most picturesque and unexpectedly complex newspaper in the history of the Italian press: Cronaca Vera, which with its pulp and fanciful titles has left an indelible mark on our imagination.

In conclusion, I wish you all the best and I take my leave with an Easter meme.
Until next time!

Bizzarro Bazar Web Series: Episode 8

In the 8th episode of Bizzarro Bazar: the most extraordinary lives of people born with extra limbs; a wax crucifix hides a secret; two specular cases of animal camouflage. [Be sure to turn on English captions.]

If you like this episode please consider subscribing to the channel, and most of all spread the word. Enjoy!

Written & Hosted by Ivan Cenzi
Directed by Francesco Erba
Produced by Ivan Cenzi, Francesco Erba, Theatrum Mundi & Onda Videoproduzioni

Impostors: two animal fictions

Picture a mythological beast, a half-snake, half-spider hybrid, likely to make both arachnophobics and herpetophobics sleepless. Imagine its tail, from which eight mutant legs stick out, and where several small, black and shiny eyes open up to scrutinize their prey. It could well be a lovecraftian horror fantasy, or a new incarnation of the alien from The Thing.
And yet, such an animal exists. Even if reality is, of course, not so dramatic.

In 1968, William and Janice Street were exploring Iran. It was their second naturalistic expedition on behalf of the Field Museum of Chicago (in the following decade they would carry out three more, in Afghanistan, Peru and Australia), with the aim of expanding the Museum’s collection with new specimens. Their mission was mainly focused on mammals, but during their trip the Streets were also collecting several reptiles.
One day they noticed a snake which seemed to have a solifugid — a type of arachnid living in arid and sandy regions — attached to its tail. Once brought back to the Museum, the specimen was examined by researcher Steven Anderson, who realized the alleged spider was in reality a part of the viper’s own morphology: since only one specimen was known, he speculated that either a tumor, a congenital defect or a parasite could be responsible for that strange appendage. The snake was identified as Pseudocerastes persicus, the persian horned viper, and almost forgotten in the shelves of the Museum for nearly fourty years.

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Then, in 2003, researcher Hamid Bostanchi came in possesion of a second specimen, identical to the one previously classified. He thus began suspecting the mutation was more than a physical defect, given that 35 years had passed from the first finding. He was therefore the first to speculate that this was an unknown species.
A third specimen was found in the poisonous animals section of the Razi Institute in Karaj, Iran: it had been mistakenly classified as a horned desert viper.
At this point Bostanchi, together with the first discoverer Steven Anderson and other collegues, published his findings and baptized the new snake Pseudocerastes urarachnoides (“with a spider-like tail”) in a 2006 essay.

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X-rays showed the caudal vertebrae, bearing no sign of malformation, extending well into this anomalous structure, which was evidently formed by modified scales. As many vipers move their tails to lure preys, Bostanchi hypotesized that this bizarre spider-shaped protuberance was nothing else than an elaborate hunt bait.
In 2008 a live P. urarachnoides was captured and the animal, held in captivity, seemed to actually use its tail to lure sparrows and baby chickens near him; then, with a sudden twitch, it bit them and poisoned them in less than a half second. In its stomach fowl remains were found, indicating that this bait could have evolved specifically to catch birds.

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To clear any doubt and verify the hypothesis, other observations followed, also in a natural environment. Here is a recent and wonderful video of the spider-tailed viper using its caudal bait to deceive and catch a bird.

If a viper imitating a small arachnid might seem an exceptional case of mimicry, what’s really astonishing is that in nature a perfectly specular example can be found: an insect, that is, mimicking a snake.
It’s the Dynastor darius, a butterfly which during its pupa stage locks itself inside a chrysalis that would definitely look far from tempting to a possible predator: in fact, it resembles a reptile’s head.

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The pupa is still aware of the world outside the chrysalis, and if it feels threatened it can shake its “mask” from side to side, to make it even more convincingly realistic.

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Sometimes it is asserted that man is the only animal capable of lying.
Yet, from crypsis to mimicry, it’s clear that fiction and deceit are extremely widespread behaviors among the rest of living creatures: they are weapons of attack and self-defense, sharpened in time. The predator has to disguise its presence, the prey has to dupe the senses of its enemy, and so on, in a constant game of mirrors in which nothing is really as it seems.