The people with ‘animal powers’

Nadya Vessey lost both legs and had a 'mermaid' tail designed for her that allowed her to flow quickly through the water (AlamyCelebrity/Alamy)

 

 

At the end of World War I, the aristocratic Horace Ridler returned to Britain from Mesopotamia a changed man. Turning his back on his privileged upbringing, Ridler tattooed his face and body in swirling patterns, took to wearing a large nose ring and stretched out his earlobes. Donning a costume of jewelled robes, he reinvented himself as Omi the Zebra Man and toured with circuses such as Barnum and Bailey, and Ripley’s Odditorium.

Ridler was just one in a long line of people who devoted themselves to taking on animal-like appeareances. The American Dennis Avner, better known as Stalking Cat or simply Cat Man, underwent over 14 surgical procedures to transform his face into a feline appearance, sculpting his cheeks, lips and eyes, and adding striped tattoos, whiskers and a set of needle-like teeth.

And for 20 years, the Leopard Man of Skye could be glimpsed living in a derelict stone cottage in the far north of Scotland, recognisable for his head-to-toe tattooed spots. Tom Leppard, as he is known to his friends, moved five years ago into a more comfortable home on the mainland at 73 years of age – not bad for a cat.

Tom Leppard had spots tattooed all over his body (Ian Waldie/REX)

Few people would willingly transform their looks in such a way, and so these people gained celebrity status in their lifetime. Now, some prosthetics wearers, body hackers and amateur scientists are taking this to a different level. With technology and biology at their disposal they are aiming to mimic animal abilities – not their appearance – and they can already do things once thought impossible for humans.

Some have been augmenting their physical abilities in places we haven’t evolved to thrive, such as water. Nadya Vessey, for example, was born with a condition that prevented her legs developing properly. A few years ago, she had a mermaid tail designed that allows her to glide through the water like a dolphin.

Others are turning to technology to sense a world that lies hidden to everybody else. Take, for instance, the invisible world of electromagnetic fields. Sharks have pits in their snout called the ampullae of Lorenzini with which they can sense disturbances in the electric field caused by their prey. Birds, lobsters and bees, meanwhile, are thought to sense magnetic fields, which some use to navigate.

Sixth sense

In recent years, body modification artists have been experimenting with magnetic implants to achieve a similar “sixth sense”. By implanting tiny disc-shaped magnets in their fingers, they can feel the electromagnetic fields surrounding everyday technology. The falling price and wider availability of powerful neodymium magnets have made the procedure increasingly popular.

Peyton Rowlands is one such enthusiast, a Texas-based biohacker who implanted a magnet into the ring finger of his left hand. “You don’t feel your finger getting pulled toward anything because the magnet is just so small,” he explains. “You feel a slight buzz once you get within a couple of inches of basically anything with electricity running through it.” With the implant, Rowlands found he could detect the fields surrounding microwaves, refrigerators and power converters. “It’s a very interesting sensation, kind of crazy. One of the things that I noticed is that DC current often felt similar to a ferrous metal or another magnet, a static bubble pushing or pulling against you, as opposed to AC currents which were much more like the kind of pins and needles feeling people describe.”

However, Rowlands suffered a reaction to the magnet and had to remove it. This is a relatively common risk with implants, and they need to be coated with some kind of biocompatible material to avoid being expelled by the body. However, even these coatings can cause a reaction, as Rowlands discovered. He’s currently searching for a more tissue-friendly alternative.

Gaining an animal ability does not have to mean relying on technology. Daniel Kish lost his sight at the age of 13 months after suffering retinal blastoma, a form of cancer that affects the eyes. Within two months, his parents noticed he seemed to be able to navigate his environment and had a sense of what was around him. “Echolocation is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember,” he says. “The clicking of echolocation is used discreetly and strategically, so it isn’t something that would necessarily be immediately obvious to my parents.”

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