Snake With Clawed Foot Found In China, The Horror!

It looks like China, with all the ridiculous pollution from its many factories, will be the site of future mutants.  Want proof?  Check out that freaky-looking snake that somehow managed to grow a limb – a single foot with claws!

Recovered in Southwest China by 66-year old Duan Qiongxiu, the snake was said to be clinging to a wall in her bedroom using its bird-like talons one night.  Out of fear and surprise, she grabbed a shoe and pummeled it to death.  Realizing the uniqueness of the creature she just killed, she threw it in a jar of alcohol to preserve.

According to reports, the snake measures 16 inches long and is as thick as a little finger.  It supposedly looks like a regular snake, with nothing but the astray clawed foot to differentiate it from its brood.  The Life Sciences Department at the West Normal University in Nanchang, China now has possession of the mutated animal and are studying it to determine the cause of the aberration.

While the oddity is still unverified as genuine (it could well be a hoax – like someone craftily attaching a limb to a dead snake), Popular Science posits that the event may not be that far-fetched.  All snake genomes, after all, contain the DNA needed to produce limbs, particularly with the tweaking of various Hox genes.  Given that Hox gene mutation has been discovered in frogs as a result of pollution, the limbed snake could actually a plausible result of our current lifestyles.

As if snakes weren’t scary enough as they were, they can now grow limbs too.  Horror!

[via Telegraph, PopSci]