We're all mutants; Teratology at it's finest.

Once upon a time, while being quite tired and zapping through a lot of 'oribble television channels, i stumbled upon this magnificent series on Discovery Channel, called "Human Mutants'.

The narrator, Armand Marie Leroi is also the writer of one of the best books in it's genre called 'Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body'. Unfortunately the television-series was limited to 3 episodes only; Discovery Networks doesn't allow one to embed the specific clip so one should look it up oneself. It's excellent researched, very respectful brought (don't expect a sideshow freak circus to enroll) and yet not stuffed with only the 'dry' facts and numbers.

An excerpt from the book:

'Why are most of us born with one nose, two legs, ten fingers and twenty-four ribs and some of us not? Why do most of us stop growing in our teens-while others just keep on growing? Why do some of us have heads of red hair and others no hair at all? The human genome, we are told, makes us what we are. But how?

In case you do live or about to visit these Dutch mountains, one can actually look up some of the museums which are visited in said tv series, the best being the Vrolik museum in Amsterdam. It's situated in the UVA, very worth while to take that gnarly trainride. Unfortunately the attached link is in dutch only, it's should give you an impression plus the address though.



Will post more about great museums with similar collections if time will let me.


Source weblink: uba.uva.nl
Source photo:atomicbooks.com