Stevie C sent along this article on
An unusual presentation of supernumerary breast tissue (just what were you googling for, Stevie?), in which a woman reports an annoying growth on her foot, and when examined, is discovered to have a breast growing there, complete with nipple and fatty tissue (but in this case, no glandular tissue).
It’s in the Dermatology Online Journal, not the Onion.
I hadn’t heard of this before myself, but it’s fascinating. These supernumerary breasts can pop up all over the place, including the face, back, and thigh (and foot, obviously). They can be functionally complete, and can even lactate. The authors report some weak and sometimes contradicted associations with other oddities, but no causal mechanism is known. These cases of autonomous self-organization and recruitment of organs are extremely interesting—it suggests that a breast would be a fairly easy tissue to grow in a dish. I’d love to know what the molecular signal for initiating differentiation—I suspect it’s something simple and common.
That’s it. 100% conclusive evidence that I’m in the wrong damned field.
eeww. it even has hair.
And pretty soon, we’ll have the George Carlin “words that sound dirty but aren’t” ‘pussyfoot’, thus turning it dirty.
Wait, do we have to blur that for viewing by the squeamish American public?
Must. . . resist. . . temptation. . . to. . . wisecrack. . . about. . . foot. . . fetishes. . . .
Aaarrgh!
Don’t worry, it’s nonfunctional, so one could call it a male nipple and sneak it by the censors.
Oh, Sexy!
Ummm… to be honest. I saw it on Digg.
Would flip flops be painful with that?
It’d have got her hanged a few hundred years ago. How common is this condition – common enough to underlie the myths about familiars?
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I’m almost certain Dr. Scholl’s has some kind of medicated patch for this.
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Other similar examples are pictured in Leroi’s book Mutants.
Full disclosure here: I have a third nipple. It’s about 1/4 inch across and about 5″ south of my (normal) right nipple. I looks like a big mole, but has that little pointy bit in the middle. I’m pretty sure a lot of people have something similar but never noticed….
And here I thought the one on my lower right chest was weird.
The prospect of culturing breast tissue, possibly an entire breast, is quite intriguing. It would be a big benefit to a woman of my acquaintance, who lost her nipples (and almost her life) due to a botched breast reduction.
Hmm. Yeah, this would be useful for transplants and such. Of course you know, the companies that sell Viagra are probably going to be looking at finding a way to grow an autonomous vagina and market them. x.x *cringes*
Yep, the journal article says it’s present in 1-5% of the population. Pretty cool, if you ask me… But it makes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxies’ “Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon 6” seem somewhat less exotic.
“chris y: It’d have got her hanged a few hundred years ago. How common is this condition – common enough to underlie the myths about familiars? ”
That was exactly my first thought too. May explain the “devil’s teet” myth. Who would have guessed?!?
I wonder if the breast could be transplanted. Might be useful for patients who have had a mastectomy.
Not quite the same as it’s most likely virally induced but this is equally bizarre: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/03/missionary_enco.html
Huh. Pretty cool, I guess.
Now, a man with three buttocks…that would really be something.
Um PZ? Couldn’t you have placed a NSFW warning? :)
Um PZ? Couldn’t you have placed a NSFW warning?
Not Safe For Walking?
Must have gotten it from walking abreast, or something nippling at her heels. But now she can walk down Mammary Lane like no one else can.
Heard of something like this before. Boy in Florida had a tooth growing from his foot. Can’t find any web references on it though.
Of course you can grow breasts in a dish. Just ask Dr. Bernardo.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0068555/
Of course, you might want to have a giant bra handy in case you miscalculate the growth rate!
It would be a big benefit to a woman of my acquaintance, who lost her nipples (and almost her life) due to a botched breast reduction
I’ve never heard of such a thing. That’s awful.
Does this breast-in-a-dish idea relate at all to ESC research?
Shoe size: 9a. Sorry. Someone had to say it.
Sexy!
Wow!
A few more like that and she can have puppies!!!
“Huh. Pretty cool, I guess.
Now, a man with three buttocks…that would really be something.”
Don’t know about a guy with three buttocks.
I have heard about the guy with three penises.
Apparently his pants fit like a glove.
They can be functionally complete, and can even lactate.
Sole food?
This adds a whole new dimension to the phrase “lift and separate.”
Interesting. I thought that extra breasts always grew along the milk lines (where teats develop, e.g. two for near the arms, whole rows for dogs and pigs, four near the hind legs for cows, two near the hind legs for goats.)
I guess with enough people in the world you can find anything.
I, too, have a tertiary nipple about an inch below my normal right nipple, and it looks just like a miniature version of it’s big brother (sister?). It even has a good crop of chest hair growing around it in the standard male nipple formation, although I also have a scar from a chest tube inserted above my right nipple which has grown nipple hair as well.
Philip Roth, eat your (heart) out.
:-)
Surely this post should have been titled, “Looking for love in all the wrong places”?
The milk lines are very long—they start on the upper back in the shoulderblade region, run over the shoulder/clavicle, down the entire thorax and abdomen, and down the inner thigh. I’ve not heard of them going down the anatomical leg to the foot, but perhaps they do.
Well after all, a breast is nothing more than a modified sweat gland (from Mom, who teaches mammalian anatomy), and what better place to find sweat glands than on the bottoms of the feet? On a side note someone decided to do genetic analysis on the microorganisms that turn milk into cheese, they found that the closest living relatives are found on the sole of the human foot (promting them to theorize that the first cheese came about when someone stepped in a puddle of milk, then was brave enough to try the curdled substance). Does that mean this nipple would produce cheese?
On to my other reaction. Eeew. That must squelch when she walks (just thinking about walking on my breasts gives me the shivers).
Are you kidding? She can go out in public without a shirt on and no one can complain she’s showing her nipples.
Try shaving around a mini-nipple in your armpit.
I wonder if AIG mentions this?
She’ll have no lack of volunteers when she wants a foot-rub.
— CV