Fish Heads & Finny Faces
There is no reason why the heads and faces of fish should look like those of human beings.
Fish are way down at the roots of the vertebrate tree, and man is up in its topmost branches.
But sometimes these "unnatural resemblances" do occur, and, the, eccentricities in nature are fascinating, especially if they send one exploring to find others.
While assistant director of the New York Aquarium, Dr.
R.
C.
Osborn wrote an article for the Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society entitled, "The Old Man of the Sea.
" With it were published two pictures, which proved startling as examples of unusual resemblances.
Some of these pictures from the past put a little strain on the reader's imagination; others are startling.
All are based upon real specimens in Nature, however much the artist may have taken liberties in the case of drawings.
Dr.
Osborn's sea-bream, both in its undressed and dressed version, is the most recent, and perhaps the most startling, of these strange resemblances.
It is a dried head, but it has not been manipulated to get a desired effect.
Particularly interesting are the large, strong teeth, conical in the front of the upper jaw and elsewhere molar-like.
They are plainly intended for crushing the shells of molluscs.
Osborn notes that, like the famous King of the Cannibal Islands, the fish "has two rows of teeth in his lower jaw", such as the aforesaid king "needed in his business.
" To go far back from this recent finny face, in a search for similar cases, we discover that one Guillaume Rondelet started the ball rolling in 1555 with a drawing of a pug-headed carp.
His drawing took a few liberties with fact, however, and it remained for Conrad Gesner, or his artist, three years later, really to give human appearance to a carp.
One picture of his shows this carp in "a how do you do?" pose, head turned toward the observer as though it were moved on a neck.
The face has staring eyes, a bulbous nose, distended cheeks, a small mouth and chin and a pectoral fin functioning as a right ear.
It is altogether ludicrous.
Another picture of a pug-headed fish-a carp-was found in a book on fishes by Guillaume Rondelet published in 1555.
Resemblance to the head of a man is rather remote, but it is included because it seems to have led to the earliest drawing in which a human face is given to a fish.
However, the bulging and overhanging forehead, the staring eye, the remnant of an almost non-existent nose and the much-distorted mouth do not place too much of a strain on the imagination.
Fish are way down at the roots of the vertebrate tree, and man is up in its topmost branches.
But sometimes these "unnatural resemblances" do occur, and, the, eccentricities in nature are fascinating, especially if they send one exploring to find others.
While assistant director of the New York Aquarium, Dr.
R.
C.
Osborn wrote an article for the Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society entitled, "The Old Man of the Sea.
" With it were published two pictures, which proved startling as examples of unusual resemblances.
Some of these pictures from the past put a little strain on the reader's imagination; others are startling.
All are based upon real specimens in Nature, however much the artist may have taken liberties in the case of drawings.
Dr.
Osborn's sea-bream, both in its undressed and dressed version, is the most recent, and perhaps the most startling, of these strange resemblances.
It is a dried head, but it has not been manipulated to get a desired effect.
Particularly interesting are the large, strong teeth, conical in the front of the upper jaw and elsewhere molar-like.
They are plainly intended for crushing the shells of molluscs.
Osborn notes that, like the famous King of the Cannibal Islands, the fish "has two rows of teeth in his lower jaw", such as the aforesaid king "needed in his business.
" To go far back from this recent finny face, in a search for similar cases, we discover that one Guillaume Rondelet started the ball rolling in 1555 with a drawing of a pug-headed carp.
His drawing took a few liberties with fact, however, and it remained for Conrad Gesner, or his artist, three years later, really to give human appearance to a carp.
One picture of his shows this carp in "a how do you do?" pose, head turned toward the observer as though it were moved on a neck.
The face has staring eyes, a bulbous nose, distended cheeks, a small mouth and chin and a pectoral fin functioning as a right ear.
It is altogether ludicrous.
Another picture of a pug-headed fish-a carp-was found in a book on fishes by Guillaume Rondelet published in 1555.
Resemblance to the head of a man is rather remote, but it is included because it seems to have led to the earliest drawing in which a human face is given to a fish.
However, the bulging and overhanging forehead, the staring eye, the remnant of an almost non-existent nose and the much-distorted mouth do not place too much of a strain on the imagination.
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