13 People with Extra Body Parts, 6-9
Our list of people with extra body parts continues with hermaphroditism and extra limbs.
6. A similar condition to craniopagus parasiticus is polycephaly, the condition of having more than one functioning head. There are many documented occurrences of this in the animal kingdom, although in most human cases we refer to the condition as conjoined twins. One recent case was that of Syafitri, born in Indonesia in 2006. These conjoined twins were given just one name by their parents who insisted that they were, in fact, one baby girl since they had only one heart and shared a body. It would have been impossible for doctors to separate the conjoined twins, and Syafitri died of unknown causes just two weeks after she was born.
7. Hermaphroditism -- the condition of being born with both male and female reproductive organs -- is more common than you might think, existing in some degree in around 1 percent of the population. In 1843, when Levi Suydam, a 23-year-old resident of Salisbury, Connecticut, wanted to vote for the Whig candidate in a local election, the opposition party objected, saying Suydam was really a woman and therefore did not have the right to vote. A doctor examined Suydam and declared that he had a penis and was therefore a man. He voted and the Whig candidate won by a single vote.
8. In 2006, a boy named Jie-Jie was born in China with two left arms. Although all three of his arms looked normal, neither left arm was fully functional, and, when he was two months old, doctors in Shanghai removed the one closest to his chest after tests revealed it was less developed.
9. While advances in medical technology mean that Jie-Jie will go on to lead a relatively normal life, Francesco Lentini, who was born in Sicily in 1889, had a life that was anything but. He was born with three legs, two sets of genitals, and an extra foot growing from the knee of his third leg -- the remains of a conjoined twin that had died in the womb. Rejected by his parents, he was raised by an aunt, then in a home for disabled children before moving to America when he was eight. He became "The Great Lentini" and toured with major circus and sideshow acts, including the Ringling Brothers' Circus and Barnum and Bailey. Part of his act included using his third leg to kick a soccer ball across the stage. He married, raised four children, and lived longer than any other three-legged person, dying in Florida in 1966 at age 78.
People born with an extra appendage like an arm or head may seem strange enough. But read on to find out about a woman with four legs and a man with an extra body.
