Having a "normal" body is something a lot of people take for granted. Sure, there are probably things about your own form that you wish you could change, like wrinkles or cellulite, but overall, most of us don't have to worry about things like having to buy custom fitted shirts to accommodate a third arm. But for other people, having a very different body is a daily reality.
As we've shown you before, the human body is really, really weird. It's all at once extremely resilient and extremely fragile, and the smallest problems in the womb can cause major deformities after birth. Some deformities are even inherited — having just five fingers is actually a recessive trait, so it's actually pretty crazy that most people's hands look the way they do! But other differences aren't just hereditary — they were caused by something like radiation or tainted food or medicine, leaving the child with extra or deformed limbs.
Whether they've kept them or had them removed, there are a surprising number of people that have been born with extra appendages. Before viewing them, be aware that some of these pictures are a bit hard to look at, but remember that many of these people have gone on to live healthy lives… They just go about it a bit differently than we do.
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1. The boy with four extra limbs
Deepak was born with extra limbs (including two very long legs) coming out of his chest. Some people in his village thought he was a devil, while others believed he was a reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishu. But Deepak got to show everyone that he was just an ordinary little boy when a hospital in Bangalore offered to do the $78,000 surgery to remove the limbs for free. Now, he is free to live the rest of his life the way he always wanted to, and there are no extra limbs to get in his way.
2. The man with two hearts
This Italian man wasn't born with two hearts; he got an extra one during a surgery many years ago. The 71-year-old was admitted to the hospital due to what was thought to be a typical cardiac arrest case, but doctors soon discovered that his situation was very different from anything they'd seen before. As it turns out, the man had acquired his second heart during a heterotopic transplant, meaning that the patient's original heart was merged with his new, healthier heart. The surgery went well…too well, in fact. The man had developed two independent heart rhythms, and both organs actually stopped when doctors tried to administer drugs to try to get their rhythms to work in sync again. But luckily, a defibrillator helped restart both hearts, and the man was able to go back to his normal life.
3. The babies who share a body
When a Brazilian woman went into labor expecting twins, she had no idea that her baby boys would end up sharing the same body. But Maria de Nazare wasn't even a little upset when doctors informed her of her babies' condition. The children, named Emanoel and Jesus, have individual brains and spines, but share a heart, a liver, a pelvis, and lungs. Despite their condition, both boys were happy, healthy, and able to eat on their own. Doctors decided not to remove either head since both of them were functioning normally and didn't pose an immediate threat to the other one.
4. The girl with a fetus on her back
When Yin Xin of China was born, doctors noticed something unusual: The girl had an underdeveloped fetus growing on her back. It started out as just an arm, but as the girl has grown, so has the fetus. It started to take on a more human shape, with evidence of a breast and fingers starting to appear as Xin reached eleven years of age. Her parents finally saved up the money to remove the fetus, and the girl is supposedly living life without the extra "twin" today.
5. The woman with a nipple on her foot
The presence of a tiny extra nipple isn't entirely unheard of — celebrities Lily Allen and Mark Wahlberg are pretty proud of theirs, and many people don't even realize they have one because they look so much like moles. But one woman has outdone them all by growing a very large nipple — about two inches wide — on the sole of her foot. She says it doesn't cause her any pain or annoyance, but I can imagine it would be a pretty big surprise for her pedicurist.
6. The woman with two uteruses
Having twins isn't normally a newsworthy occasion, but for a 24-year-old Florida woman, it definitely was. She didn't just give birth to two healthy babies at the same time— she did it with two uteruses. About 1 in 2,000 women has this condition, but the birth of her twins, Nathan and Natalie, is a 1-in-5-million scenario. For it to have occurred, she would have had to have released two eggs at once, both of which would have to be separately fertilized and implanted into separate uteruses. Then both fetuses would have had to have grown to completion in each individual uterus. Nathan and Natalie are both happy and healthy, and they'll always be known as a medical miracle.
7. The girl with eight limbs
When Lakshmi was born, many people in her village believed she was a goddess. But the poor little girl couldn't walk, sit, or stand, and it looked like she would have to spend her life completely immobile. Recently, though, a team of doctors helped remove all of Lakshmi's extra limbs, which were actually the result of a parasitic twin that stopped developing in the womb. The girl still has a long road ahead of her; she has scoliosis and will need surgery to repair all the internal damage that was caused by the removal of the twin. But she's leading a much more normal life than she and her parents could have ever dared to hope for.
8. The boy with 31 fingers and toes
A boy in China with sixteen toes and fifteen fingers underwent surgery in 2010 to have all the extra digits removed and is now living a normal life. Four of the fingers on one of his hand and three fingers on the other had actually been fused together, but now the extra ones have been separated and removed. He was once bullied incessantly at school for his condition, but now it seems he will be able to live the life of a normal schoolboy.
9. The baby with an extra head
When Manar was born, doctors and her mother were shocked to see that she had a twin…but the other baby wasn't what you'd expect to see. The twin, whom the mother named Islaam, was only a head. She had her own brain and could blink and make facial expressions separate from Manar's, but sadly, she couldn't survive on her own. Doctors made the decision to separate Islaam from Manar, at the cost of the underdeveloped baby's life, so that Manar could go on to live happily and healthily. Tragically, Manar also passed away from a brain infection just before she turned two years old, but she and Islaam will go down in history as truly amazing babies.
10. The woman with two vaginas
YouTube personality and model Cassandra Bankson received a surprise when she went to the doctor for a case of kidney pain. Her doctor told her that she actually had two vaginas, two cervices, and two wombs. He said that condition basically resembled "an upturned nose," and that while she might have some trouble getting pregnant, there's no reason it should negatively affect her sex life. Even though Cassandra wasn't aware of her unusual body trait, she said it did explain why she frequently got two heavy periods a month.
11. The woman with horns
It's not too uncommon for senior citizens to develop spots of compacted keratin if they've had a lot of sun exposure throughout their lives, but it is uncommon for them to grow horns as a result of it. Zhang Ruifang was 100 years old when she sprouted a horn on one side of her head. It started out as a small spot made of the same material as hair or fingernails, but it eventually grew to be over two inches long. Soon enough, she also developed another spot of the same stuff on the other side of her head, and she stated that she was "looking forward" to the other one growing so they could match.
12. The women who share three legs
Ganga and Jamuna Mondal are conjoined twins who between them have four arms and three legs. They share a stomach, but have separate kidneys, livers, and hearts. They earned a living by performing in a circus. Now 45 years old, they recently found love with a teacher named Ahmad. Their boyfriend works part-time at the circus as a sound engineer. They're all aware that they make for an odd trio, but their love has truly conquered all.
13. The boy with an extra DNA strand
Six-year-old Alfie Clamp has become the first person in the world to be discovered to have an extra strand of DNA. He was born blind and with disabilities, and the tests the doctors carried out revealed his extremely unusual condition. It's caused him to have multiple problems early on in his life, including a few instances where he stopped breathing completely, but nobody is sure how it will affect him later in life because his situation is unpredecented.
14. The boy with three arms
A tiny baby born with an extra arm was able to have the limb successfully removed at a hospital in India. Doctors also revealed that the little girl had a club foot and was missing a kidney. Now that she has a better chance at a normal life, she will be undergoing therapy to help her use her good left arm and her club foot so she can grow up just like any other child.
15. The girl who was born pregnant
A baby girl in China is one of 200 babies ever to have been born pregnant. Doctors discovered that the girl had two abnormal growths in her stomach, which turned out to be two underdeveloped fetuses. What likely happened is that the baby had absorbed the growths while still developing in the womb herself. Both of the "twins" were removed when the girl was 3 weeks old, and all signs point to her having a perfectly normal life now that she doesn't have them in her body anymore.
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