It’s back! Mystery Anatomy is in full swing again after a lovely summer holiday in Antarctica- check out its fabulous tan freezerburn! We now have a new scoreboard page, too, for your convenience.
Today is another poetry round, which means you not only get 1 pt for trying but also can amaze and delight us all– and win extra points for rhapsodizing in sublime eloquence at the marvel of nature you are about to behold!
The poetry form for today is the SONNET. 14 lines as usual, but we’ll relax the form and allow you to be maximally creative– just include some rhyming, but you do not need to stick to iambic pentameter or other rigid, galling forms. You must (1) identify the specimen, (2) explain what’s important/unusual about it, and (3) have fun.
Look upon this foul form, feel its greasy exterior and inhale deeply of the same rancid perfume that might have graced Pliny’s or Caesar’s aquiline nose, while your mind reels at its historical significance, which spurred on one individual of some note to exclaim “I was so ignorant I do not even know there were three varieties… how do they differ?”
Difficulty: The poetry will be the hardest part for some.
Stomach-Churning Rating: 2/10. Again, the main threat here is the poetry.
Proceed, morpho-poets; let this museum specimen be no paltry muse!
Some labels to help those unfamiliar with the wonders of chicken foot anatomy! The position I’ve labelled the “extra toe” in is arbitrary; it might be “toe 1″ that is the new toe. That might make more developmental sense, that the identity of “toes” has migrated up the limb to add a new toe– and is the spur in male chickens also spurred on by similar signals? No one knows, I think.
