Good thing we killed it. farking thing had it coming. Foraging for food, protecting it's home.

Sorry, I don't buy it.

These days, everyone has cell phones with functional cameras on them. I just got back from 2 years in the deep African bush, and even little kids out in the middle of nowhere had Chinese knockoffs of good phone brands. If this is the best photo they can produce, I'm going to call 'hoax'.

UberDave: TROOOOLLLL!!

It does look humanoid. If it were only one (assuming TFA is real) I'd think it was a deformed kid from a villager who sent it off into the woods to fend for itself. There being three others...

Seriously, WTF?

Did some research on the photo, apparently it's been making the rounds for a few years.

It's apparently real, though not of an unknown creature. It's a human infant with arcania. Sad.

TROOOOLLLL!!

try acrania not arcania.

But what does it taste like???

At least they killed it. God forbid an innocent life form should, you know, live.

I_C_Weener: Ever see Watership Down?

Holy shiat, I was just thinking that, actually...

Also: notice how the pic is blurry? It almost makes it look like Bigfoot's illegitimate offspring.

Ever see Watership Down?

Mangy Fraggle?

powerful katrinka: try acrania not arcania.

Thanks! I Googled arcania and all I could find was video game sites.

I had a look at some fetuses and infants born with acephalia-whatsit and some of them look like baby trolls. A lot of folklore is based on medical anomalies.

I am a bad, bad person for saying so, but some of the pictures were hilarious, in a sort of H.P. Lovecraftian way. And if you think a frog is cute, some of the babies were horribly, tragically cute.

Here's a tender and touching photo of one such little monster and its proud parents:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/facebook-sorry-for-deleting-family-ph o to-of-newborn-with-brain-defect/

Humans, gotta love 'em. There's some good in the old hairless monkeys yet.

The famous writer, Arthur Conan Doyle, better known for his Lost World and Sherlock Holmes novel, defended an Irish family for killing a deformed enfant in the belief that it was a changeling--in folklore, an elderly, retarded or simply impossible to live individual that the Good Folk swap for a human infant like cuckoos or mocking birds laying their eggs in another bird's nest.

This belief was not doubt fostered in part by such cases. The enfant would look like a troll or elf to traditional peasants, and not knowing any better, they would assume that it was a changeling.

The traditional responses are somewhat comical (such as going through the motions of brewing beer in an eggshell or casting millet seed before the fire because the Good Folk can't resist fascination with these tricks and will reveal themselves by their reaction) or the tragic response of exorcising the supernatural creature by placing the infant on a red hot shovel. In this historical case, it was the tragic response which was tried.

I've always been fascinated with folklore. I read a lot of books on the supernatural, mythology, folklore, anomalies and so forth long before I discovered the works of Charles Hoy Fort and became a long time reader of The Fortean Times magazine, which is practically Fark's sister site.

I have a strong stomach when it comes to medical anomalies as well. I don't lose any sleep over monsters, horrible diseases, deformity or mutants. Some of them are even attractive and interesting people which I would like to meet.

Have you ever seen the podcasts where Ricky Gervais (a very amusing a-hole of the practical joker sub-type) introduces Karl Pilkington to the famous British dwarf actor. In one of them Ricky Gervais has the dwarf dressed in a frog costume. He's one of the world's biggest jerks, but the frog costume is brilliant. I think it would be a great costume ball costume, or Halloween costume. If the dwarf had a prince costume on underneath and could do a quick change, it would be a shoo-in for first prize.

Pilkington is a long-time reader of The Fortean Times but he muddles everything he reads or thinks about so thoroughly it either comes out as Zen Koans or complete and utter nonsense, even if he has a valid and very clever point concealed in the rubbish he talks.

I love Karl Pilkington. He should be an honorary Farker. And Ricky and Steven are such jerks sometimes. If they weren't so busy being "rational" and "scientitians" they might learn something profoundly wise and intelligent from that little egg-headed idiot they torment.

I feel his pain sometimes but other times I have to laugh because joke's on the smart guys.

I've seen some of the most ghastly things--men with their faces half destroyed by disease, for example--but also some things that are straight out of fairy tales and mythology.

Weird, wild and wonderful. That's how I like my www.

The One True TheDavid: namegoeshere:

namegoeshere: Arcania is NOT compatable with life, which is good, actually.

NOT, Dammit! They don't live.

What is this "arcania" anyway? Please give me a URL. All I can find are references to Tarot, politics and kinky sex.

They meant 'acrania', or the absence of a formed skull.

FWIW, this doesn't exactly look like acrania to me, but instead anencephaly (the buggy 'frog' eyes are characteristic of this deformity.)

/GIS either term at your own risk... needless to say this GIS will be completely, totally NSFW and 100% pure nightmare fuel

xanadian: I_C_Weener: Ever see Watership Down?

Holy shiat, I was just thinking that, actually...

Also: notice how the pic is blurry? It almost makes it look like Bigfoot's illegitimate offspring.


"I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. Cause there's a large, out of focus monster roaming the countryside. 'Run, he's fuzzy, get out of here!'"

Dow Jones and the Temple of Doom: Did some research on the photo, apparently it's been making the rounds for a few years.

It's apparently real, though not of an unknown creature. It's a human infant with arcania. Sad.

With what now?

Let me guess...

Hmm. Not a traditional Muppet, but I can see a sort of Jim Henson Company influence there. You could put that in the background of The Dark Crystal and it would blend in pretty well.

Beyond that, I have no comment on the story. I'm a Muppetologist, not a cryptozoologist.

KERMIT!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

That's the ugliest streetlight I've ever seen.

It's time to close the curtains
And just turn off the lights
Don't want to meet that Muppet on the Muppet Show tonight

Ewww. It looks like a rabbit had sex with that creepy root thing from Pan's Labyrinth