In March 2006, a baby boy identified only as Jie-jie was born in Shanghai with a fully formed third arm: he had two full-sized left arms, one ventral to the other. This is the only documented case of a child born with a fully formed supernumerary arm. It is an example of an extra limb on a normal body axis.
Interestingly, in the neurological literature, there are case reports of people with cortical or subcortical lesions who experience having extra limbs, so-called supernumerary phantom limbs. These phantoms are typically experienced as an additional arm or leg [12]–[15].
Polymelia
Limb malformations occur in approximately 6 per 10,000 live births with 3.4 per 10,000 affecting the upper limb and 1.1 per 10,000 affecting the lower limb.
It is a common condition that often runs in families. The extra fingers are usually small and abnormally developed. Polydactyly is one of the most common congenital (present at birth) hand abnormalities. About one out of every 500 to 1,000 babies are born with the condition, usually with only one hand affected.
The Amikuk is a creature of Yup'ik legend, said to live within the ground. As a shapeshifter, the Amikuk is said to take many forms, and to behave differently dependent on where a person encounters them. In the sea, it is reported to be hairless with four arms.
Hecatoncheires means "hundred handed". They were gigantic and had fifty heads and one hundred arms each of great strength. There were three of them: Briareus also called Aegaeon, Cottus, and Gyges also called Gyes.
Manticore. One of the most forbidding of all mythical creatures, the manticore was a bloodthirsty quadruped that supposedly sported the head of a blue-eyed man, the auburn body of a lion and the stinging tail of a scorpion.
WHAT IS POLYMELIA? Polymelia is a rare birth defect that only affects only one in a million infants and causes sufferers to be born with extra limbs. The rare disorder occurs in the womb when the cells form abnormally during embryonic development.
The four types of symbrachydactyly include: Short-finger symbrachydactyly (Type 1): Having all or most of a thumb and four fingers. The digits that do form might have missing bones (phalanges) and will be noticeably shorter than typical fingers.
Middle-child syndrome is part of the psychology behind birth order. Birth order ranges from firstborn, or oldest; to second-born, third-born, and so forth; to youngest, sometimes called the last born. Though many experts think birth order is important to personality and family structure, not everyone is on board.
The daughter was named after Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth (who is depicted as four-armed). The girl was sometimes an object of worship as an incarnation of the goddess; by the age of two, she was known all over India.
Do extra limbs ever work? If they do, it's very rare. Jie-jie's extra limb doesn't seem to work, but his doctors still say they have “no record of any child with such a complete third arm.” For an extra arm to function properly, it would need to develop bones and muscles and connect up to the nervous system.
Amelia is a congenital anomaly characterized by the complete absence of one or more limbs (see Fig. 36). It can be distinguished from other limb deficiencies, especially terminal transverse deficiencies, and rare conditions such as sirenomelia and limb-body wall spectrum (see Fig. 37 and Table 2).
The condition is called polymelia, where the Greek poly- means “many” and -melia refers to “limbs.” The congenital disorder results in additional, unusable arms, legs, hands or feet that commonly appear shrunken and misshapen.
Reconstructive hand and arm transplants are for adults who have suffered an amputation or extreme loss of function of their hand and arm due to injury or illness. You may require a transplant if you have almost no function of your hands and are not a candidate for alternative or conventional reconstructive surgery.
It has long been believed that our body image is limited by our innate body plan -- in other words that we cannot experience having more than one head, two arms and two legs. However, brain scientists have now shown that it is possible to make healthy volunteers experience having three arms at the same time.
Polydactyly may be passed down in families. This trait involves only one gene that can cause several variations. African Americans, more than other ethnic groups, can inherit a 6th finger. In most cases, this is not caused by a genetic disease.
Symbrachydactyly is a congenital condition (a condition a person is born with) in which the fingers are not formed properly. Symbrachydactlyly is a very rare condition. It occurs in about 1 in every 32,000 live births.
Octopuses can move their eight arms independently, as each arm is controlled by its own nerve centre. This means that an octopus has nine brains, as well as having three hearts!
The extra limb is from an unborn twin of the baby that did not fully take shape, a phenomenon known as parasitic twin. Such instances are rare, says Dr. Ramesh Reddy, a senior paediatric surgeon at Niloufer Hospital. “Such births have odds of one in one lakh births.
Researchers estimate that about 1 in every 1,900 babies is born with a limb reduction defect in the United States.
Ares, son of Zeus and Hera, was the god of the most brutal and unrestrained aspects of war. Though he was one of the Twelve Olympians, his fellow gods had little love for him. In myth, Ares was characterized by his cruelty and insatiable taste for bloodshed.