What Side Shows Can Teach Us

We’ve all heard of Tom Thumb, the Elephant Man, the bearded lady and the Siamese twins. Legendary entrepreuner P.T. Barnum charged admission to catch a glimpse of them at his traveling carnivals. Audiences also flocked to theaters in 1932 for Tod Browning’s film Freaks, considered a masterpiece of the grotesque. People marvelled at the sight of an armless woman using her feet to eat with a fork, or Prince Randian using only his mouth to light a cigarette.

We’ve become a more compassionate society since then – we no longer lock people up and force them to parade around for our own amusement. Yet our fascination with nature’s flukes hasn’t diminished. Mark Blumberg says we shouldn’t look away from them – in fact, we could learn a lot about ourselves from studying these so-called freaks. Blumberg is a professor of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience and developmental science at the University of Iowa, and is editor-in-chief of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience. His book is called Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution.

The scientist Charles Stockard, who studied the development of bird embryos in the early part of last century, wrote that the “important matter of a few hours’ difference in egg-laying time lies between the successful class of birds and a hopelessly unfit monstrous condition.” So even extreme anomalies, like two-headed animals, can be produced with just subtle adjustments.

Blumberg writes that “the embryo’s potential to produce two heads is no less ancient, and no less fundamental, than its potential to produce just one.” So basically, if our species finds it useful to have babies with two heads, our bodies can begin to do that. Also, we try to “correct” what we see as abberations, like fitting a three-legged dog with a prosthetic leg, which is often times not the best soultion. These questions arise when babies born with both make and female genital organs. Often, doctors and parents will make a choice for the baby. But in the animal world, sexual ambiguity and plasticity are just an ordinary way of life.

And while we have made strides in preventing some developmental anomalies, new environmental conditions could make these anomalies more likely. Chemical dumping, climate change, and nuclear accidents like Chernobyl could lead to a world in which mutations are more widespread.

Also, we travel with producer Caitlyn Kim to New York’s Coney Island, where she found that the sideshow freaks of today have a little more say in how they're treated than the residents of Victorian-era freak shows. She produced this piece for B-Side radio. Click here to listen and click here to visit B-Side Radio.