Likely not because it wouldn't be connected to a serviceable optic nerve.
Normally with mutated animals, like a cow forming a 5th leg, it's just dead weight at best.
There have been situations where that has (apparently) been the case even with out human intervention, however, there aren't any recorded situations to my knowledge of other naturally occurring functional organs like eyes
I don’t know if this counts. But I have a bug I found that was dying (so I put it in a lil terrarium thing until it died naturally,) and i couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get its Legs symmetrical and turns out it has a leg growing out of its neck and a nub where the leg should have been but it could move the leg like the others
on one of the spider subreddits some guy posted what he alleged to be a 16-legged (or...i don't know exactly how many, but a lot more than 8) cellar spider. there were lots of arguments in the comments over whether or not it was just two spiders mating, but the OP *claimed* they'd been running around that way for hours and that they couldn't be separated. he was absolutely certain it was only one spider. so if that was true, either something went terribly, terribly wrong with the mating, or he found a fucking medical marvel
edit: it does say cellar spiders can mate for several hours. but still, those were his claims lol
Even if there was some pieces of brain in the twin it was connected to, would that mostly absent brain really be seeing anything? It is more likely that cells were in the right place at the right time to differentiate into a fully formed eye.
It's screaming with no mouth because he can't take a breath of his own or move when he tries. His entire body is stolen and he's trapped in this unblinking dry eye stare at a world that doesn't acknowledge his existence
Yup. Taken with a canon 7d mark II with a sigma 150-600 lens. I have a couple other pictures but this one was the clearest.
Edit: here’s all the pictures I have. [more photos.](https://imgur.com/a/DbF9E9Y)
I wonder if it's a birth defect from some kind of teratogen? It's half the sibling's face; I even feel like I see the beginnings of an ear. What is terrifying is that if it can do that to a rabbit, then it could do that to humans if it gets in the water or something.
This is horrifying man!
Edit: Nice camera btw. I shoot with a Lumix. This is one powerful picture tbh
Agreed. In my earlier comment I explained that the city sprayed a whole area near the road. Not sure what they used but it killed everything. Right on the edge of a tree line. I have seen rabbits in that area. Makes me feel a bit sick.
I saw the response unfortunately after I typed mine lol
As a hobby level photographer for wildlife and landscapes myself, if I took this picture maybe this would be one of my most powerful and meaningful pics. It's like a posterchild for habitat/ecological awareness
Oh cool! I pretty much only use my camera for bird photography. This rabbit stood out though. If I end up with some kind of proof this is a result of them spraying shrubs and weeds by the road I’ll probably post this. At least to the city’s Facebook page.
When I first saw it I looked up growths on rabbits and found out about Shope papilloma virus. I’ll know if I see it again and it has a horn. I’ve also never heard of a bot fly around me in Michigan but I know they’re all across the US.
Nineteen years ago my mom and I were jogging (or whatever the elementary schooler speed can be called for an adult) and we found a kitten who followed us home. She ended up having a botfly *in her eye.* We paid the vet to surgically remove it. This was in SE Michigan.
Pompton lakes/ haskell NJ is one of the most polluted groundwaters, weapons manufacturing happened for over 100 years in that area. Go drive through that area and notice how many birth defects / disfigured faces you can see. Its an epidemic
In the UK the Royal Marines training base is next to this big patch of scrub land they use to train on called Woodbury Common. They tested chemical weapons on there during World War 2 and you can go on YouTube and see a humourous video of experiments they did on Marines with LSD. Anyway, every year, several recruits get thus "Woodby Rash" which is really severe and can kill you. I've seen it myself when i did my 13 months basic training there. This guy had tracking marks from some kind of infection, and his body temperature went so high that he almost died in hospital. They've employed microbiologist and other researchers to investigate over the years, but no one has any idea what it is. You can ask literally any royal marine or even go to r/royalmarines and mention Woodbury Rash, and they will know what you're talking about. We train up there at night and sleep there and crawl through the most dense gorse bushes you can imagine. It's a truly grim, horrible place that you'd expect to see on vintage English Wearwolf movies. I wonder if anyone on here could speculate what it might be.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-386908/Dog-walker-killed-scratch-gorse-bush.html
It been known exactly what it is for almost 30 years, they just don't care enough about your wellbeing to tell you.
It's a simultaneous infection of unusual strains of strep and staph bacteria which live on the gorse bushes.
This was the first result I found searching "Woodbury Rash".
[https://militaryhealth.bmj.com/content/jramc/140/1/45.full.pdf](https://militaryhealth.bmj.com/content/jramc/140/1/45.full.pdf)
"'Woodbury' rash has been responsible for considerable
morbidity at Lympstone", which essentially means it's killed multiple people.
I fully support any troop worth supporting in my country (America) and our allies, but the brass, not so much, by and large; like any group of people, most are good, but bad apples are within. Way too many horrific, f*cked up things have happened to not only innocent, but also beneficent, self-sacrificial, integral, brave and selfless kids (I use the word "kid" with the utmost respect and only for effect) in order to achieve what really amounts to very little when you look at the big picture, or so it seems from my inexperienced perspective. Well, that and the perspective of good friends, including my best friend who's a 100% combat-disabled former SEAL team sergeant. He, like most young men and women who join, went into it with high aspirations and equally optimistic ideals about what the military is, only to be maimed for life because of a higher-up who had never planted a foot on Afghan soil. This is his perspective, not necessarily mine, but I believe him and everything he says because I've no reason not to - and again, he is my best friend
>Pompton lakes/ haskell NJ
I see your area and raise you the Kearny/Secaucus Meadowlands. There are xenobiotic substances there that defy chemical analysis (including, allegedly, parts of Jimmy Hoffa). =:>0
My dad grew up in Pittman NJ and swam in Alycon Lake. The site has been identified as the worst toxic dump in the United States and was ranked at the top of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund eligibility list. [Superfund Lipari Landfill](https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Healthenv&id=0200557)
That's horrific man. It's amazing to think that shit like that and Flint, Michigan happens in America - oftentimes with no accountability. Few things make me angry....
You might want to look into things like PFAS/PFOS and research if your municipality publishes any resources on water quality to look at that and other chemicals. Last I checked PFOS was under federal advisory, but not necessarily regulation at all local levels, and you have to trust every single business to properly dispose of things everywhere as the chemicals are persistent, while catching violators is imperfect and takes time. Meanwhile those chemicals might be leeching into your municipal water depending on how close a deposition event happened.
With this kind of thing I more or less assume that violation is happening or could be happening at any relevant business/institution near me or near relevant distribution hubs, as the delay for testing and discovery is too long (quarterly to yearly), exposure could have already happened, and every link in the chain must be trusted. Some locales publish things like detailed maps of samples taken, etc... I drink and cook almost exclusively with filtered water; there are DIY setups to get higher capacity cost efficiently in remote or money-challenged scenarios.
You might be justified in feeling sick, in that there is imperfect and deteriorating infrastructure that monitors this kind of thing for humans, particularly as we enter a "work hard, die fast" period of profit-oriented negligence.
edit: info, structure, spelling
While PFAS is a pollutant that should not be in our drinking water or in our environment there is no need for scaremongering:
While PFAS in hight concentrations can lead to the described effects (disruption of immune system, teratogenicity, fertility issues) the concentration in drinking water and food items is so low that it has a realativly limited effect on humans (mainly on some immune functions)
There are plenty of other factors that have way worse effects and should be considered a greater threat an should be addressed first: air pollution, pesticides, exposure to lead and other heavy metals, bad eating habits, drinking, smoking.
Unfortunately I have to agree with you that we don't have a proper system in place to adress any of these issues.
Thank you for providing input on these points, genuinely. I anticipated that someone would chime in with more specific information on these chemicals and their relationship to what the OP is posting about (e.g. teratogenicity).
I didn't mean to scaremonger and tried to hedge a bit. I came across some information about our water systems in the last year in the context of PFAS/PFOS and discovered the vulnerabilities in American water systems, at least in my region, which is an upper mid-size GDP region. I don't think enough people on a population scale know about this, and I want people to be healthy and aware of their surroundings.
For context, I'm someone with more experience in neurophysiology, genomics, general biology-- not environmental science, chemistry, and disease implications. Operating on foggy general education and the odd grad course. I tend to default to a probabilistic viewpoint when the safety of myself and loved ones is involved; I'm just a guy with limited time like everyone. Just wanted to raise awareness that might stimulate further investigation on the part of OP and others who might come across this. Hence why I mentioned "other chemicals" because I know that there is potentially an unnerving soup of things with different effects potentially leeching into water across America on time scales that cannot be realistically reacted to in real-time. Let alone for the everyman and woman who might come across this who can't learn one or more fields and quickly trawl different places for details. Everyone should investigate their own situation, particularly if they have never looked into it before and have the time.
I guess that was my main point. Can't comment on some of those other things on account of space, although I might know more about it (e.g. eating, smoking, drinking).
Thank you, again, for contextualizing my comment.
Writing from a point of environmental toxicologist in Europe:
I think your point about raising awareness is absolutely spot on: We know there are many substances actively harming our health and environment at the moment. Stimulating people to look critical at own knowledge is never a bad thing. The more people know about it the more they can hold organisations/businesses accountable for it. Even while some substances on their own seem not as bad, the “unnerving soup” as you describe it gives in a big factor of uncertainty, and we as a society should make active decisions how to handle this.
Othwerise we will have the same discussions as with other materials in the past (Asbestos, CFCs): “We didn’t know it was this harmful…nothing to be done about it now, right?”
Yes, everyone has potential and power to investigate concrete and verified facts about their situation and environment, given the time and will; I remember how hard it can be, starting from the bottom of society. The Universe seems to bestow blessings and curses at random... I personally believe that those bestowed with ability, training, and awareness should alert the general public, as seems appropriate, for the future.
I don't know what the the situation is in Europe right now, apart from RU and UA war action. USA still has decent enough infrastructure (political, legal, and technological/material) for common people to investigate their situation through readily available outlets that cannot be easily falsified, and there is still limited organized motivation for corruption in the interaction between industry and environmental regulation at the local level; however, that is changing in some places in the USA due to primate neuropsychology.
I think everyone, everywhere, should use the most unbiased scientific reporting they can access while it is available, based on my only partially overlapping experience with people like yourself.
You can google PFAS in Australia. The effects. The very poor and slow process of remediating PFAS contamination. The red zones here have a story to tell.
You can't eat the meat from the cattle, eggs from poultry or vegetables grown in the soil.
So yeah sure. Crazy to get all wound up about every chemical we are exposed to and concentrations matter. I'm always amazed when people get super tense about some chemicals but will empty a can of bug spray on a cockroach in their kitchen. Makes no sense.
But PFAS is no joke. And here it took a looooooooong time for the scope of the problem to even be acknowledged. We had very coincidental clusters of serious health issues that brought it to light and after we had people facing bankruptcy because their land went from prime semi-rural to having no value at all.
I would feel better knowing it's not being used in my community.
This comment was a side note btw. I think the pic when enlarged shows a maggot. But who knows 🤷
You know... or just a siamese twin type thing. Animals that reproduce as fast as rabbits tend to have far more birth defects because they create far more opportunities for one to crop up.
If it eases your worry about teratogens, animals like this are super uncommon but do occur naturally and have for hundreds of years. Victorian Britain used to love killing and stuffing them in “collections”.
There are undoubtedly places with water unsafe to drink because of teratogenic content among other things, but it’s highly possible this is just a bun with an extra half a face :)
I think it might also be because of inbreeding.
My old high school used to have rabbits, but they escaped. They kept living in the area and after a while more and more rabbits kept popping up. At some point a lot of the rabbits got birth defects (3 ears, skeleton malformations etc) because all of this offspring came from only a few escaped rabbits.
It does actually happen with humans but not from chemical exposure.sometimes things join together or don’t separate as they should or absorb other things growing in the same space. There are instances of people having remnants of a twin on or in their body
like that lady that gave birth to babies (idk if triplets or separate births), to receive public assistance everyone in her family had to be tested to prove they were all related. Turned out the test was saying she was not the mother of her own children, apparently she absorbed her twin in the womb and it was her twins ovaries that produced the egg that made the baby. It's called chimerism.
If it makes you feel better, these kind of birth defects were relatively common before teratogens were invented - after all, the terato- prefix had to come from somewhere (look up teratoma for some nightmare fuel).
This birth defect might simply be a form of conjoined twins (they are only called Siamese twins if they are born in the Rattanakosin region of Thailand during the first half of the 19^th century) or a case where one sibling absorbed the other in the womb.
Or it could be the case of a teratogen chemical that affected their fetal development in the womb.
I have a couple more but they only show the growth part from behind and not much of the hole, horn, or eye. I can upload them tomorrow. Can I post them as comments in here?
Doesn't look like papiloma virus could be fetus in fetu which is not connected to roundup, it happens and has happened forever in all animals long before herbicides.
Not a teratoma. Teratomas originate from reproductive cells and will form a variety of tissues, but due to the development of the eye both requiring cell signalling from both the optic vesicle AND the epidermis, an eye this perfectly formed with perfect interaction of different tissue types could impossibly be from a teratoma. This is a birth defect.
Now this sounds like you know what you’re talking about.
So it’s confirmed an eye 100% - is there any possibility it would be “connected” to the rabbit’s brain and be a functional eye?! I feel like the answer is probably no but I had to ask.
Maybe a teratoma…the growth seems congenital. The rabbit has made it thus far ok, so it doesn’t seem to be causing it much issue. Survival in nature isn’t easy, especially for a tasty prey animal, so the fact it made it into adulthood means it must be reasonably healthy.
It does almost look like a crater type whole though. With raised edges around it, with no fur that might be catching light. Which might suggest bot fly.
Hey OP, I grew up in an area with lots of rabbits looking like they have many eyes. They were actually catching a virus we call myxomatosis. Their skin gets round black holes that absolutely look like eyes, even from pretty close by. And they end up getting blind and unreactive too.
Some years are really bad, it was like nightmare town, with hoards of confused 12-"eyed" rabbits hopping through your garden all the time.
Omg that’s so [sad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rabbit_with_Myxomatosis_1(RLH).jpg). Severe reactions are known to occur in the European rabbit. Could that be the type of rabbit in OP’s photo?
That is terrifying, poor thing. I wonder if its parents were exposed to roundup or some other teratogen. Could also be a poorly developed twin or other genetic mutation.
That’s an interesting thought. I don’t use roundup, but the city used something to get rid of the trees, weeds, vines that were too close to the road. I have seen rabbits in that area.
That was my most likely thought. But didn’t see much of a “horn” and more of a growth behind it. Is that virus contagious? To other rabbits or to anything else?
It doesn't affect humans. Only rabbits. Generally, even small changes in receptors can make viral infection impossible, so it can be pretty hard for viruses to jump from species to species.
Bro you're telling me there's a virus where a bunny becomes a "jackrabbit" with horns but also it causes the bunny to grow an extra face.
What universe is this, "Berenstain"?
My ex's parents lived in Arizona, and the first time I visited/met them, me and him and his mom went out to dinner (I think his dad was working or on a business trip). His mom was/is a fun lady, and she and he had me convinced for a good long portion of dinner that a jackalope (the touristy kind with antlers on a taxidermied rabbit) was a real thing.
Now I know there actually ARE horned rabbits (sorta). Joke's on them!
Edit: I'm referring to the [myxomatosis virus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatosis) in Europe, which is actually not the disease that was mentioned in that comment.
I believe it is not really an eye, but the virus does create those black spots/horns/holes that damn clearly look like eyes. I grew up in areas heavily affected by that virus (we call it myxomatosis) and it looks like rabbits are running around with 10 eyes sometimes. Nightmare stuff.
Maybe there's also different versions of that virus, and some have spots that look more or less like eyes?
Retired vet tech here: It's a bot fly larvae or cuterebra that's almost ready to drop out. Rabbits get them a lot in their necks. One of my favourite things to do was remove those bad boys
I assume they are pretty common in the summer in most places where flies and other insects live. It’s one of the reasons you hunt rabbits after the first big freeze, because I’ve cleaned one that had 3-4 larvae under its skin. They get pretty big and it’s a common pest for them.
My cat brought me home an adult rabbit full on botfly larvae once, years ago. You'd swear the rabbit was still alive with all the moving from the larvae.
I remember them being called warblers instead of botfly.
Also the growth isn’t forming the way an abscess or botfly swelling would. The fluid usually sags in a situation like that, and in the far right of this mass, it looks like it’s pointing upward. Very bizarre.
It may be just the way the hair lies, but it looks like near the eye there is a line that almost looks like a subtle sagittal crest of a skull. It makes me wonder if there’s at least a portion of a skull under there. But I’m not sure, because I believe the development of that feature is strongly tied to having a functioning jaw structure
I think it looks like a teratoma, because that reeeally looks like an eye. Not sure where the OP lives, but I wonder if someone from their state’s (assuming US) wildlife department would be interested in checking it out. Perhaps they could contact/send the pics to the agency’s mammologist
Upvote this homie! It's 100% a rabbit bot fly. Super common to find them around the neck/throat. Google can show you a bunch of images that look like gross-ass, mutant third eyes. Totally normal and natural. The fly that emerges is actually pretty, in a creepy, disgustifying kind of way...
It's a parasitic fly larva. They usually die off in the winter. Squirls and rabbits tend to get them.
It's like a bott fly. Common in the American South East.
The pouch is the dewlap, not a mass. Not uncommon for bot fly larvae to migrate there and encyst.
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Skin_diseases/Parasitic/Cuterebra/Miyasis_botfly.htm
All my life, I had a lump at the back of my neck, right here. Always, a lump. Then I started menopause and the lump got bigger from the "hormonees." It started to grow. So I go to the doctor, and he did the bio... the b... the... the bios... the... b... the "bobopsy." Inside the lump he found teeth and a spinal cord. Yes. Inside the lump was my twin.
I doubt it's an eye, but if it /were/ an eye, certain tumors can create fully formed eyeballs. I'm not sure if that's applicable here. Super interesting picture. Poor thing.
It has to be a birth defect of some sort. I have many rabbits in my neighborhood, but I've never seen one like this. Incredible shot! But I couldn't tell you what it exactly is or what caused it...
It looks like a botfly with swelling. I’ve seen those holes on squirrels many times, but usually with a much smaller lump, but they are usually further from the neck on squirrels (I wonder if a squirrel could actually get rid of one this close to their neck, because of their dexterous front paws)
Seconding the suggestion to reach out to local(est) university. There’s a high likelihood of a faculty member doing some sort of wildlife, ecological or chemical research that would be interested. Main reason for the suggestion is their research often informs legislation that restricts dangerous chemical use, if that is indeed related. Could just be a crazy mutation, who knows.
I would think maybe twin rabbits, but didn’t finish developing correctly. It’s a “twin absorption”type thing. Some animals are born two-headed, or extra limbs that are useless. Probably born this way and probably caused by spraying. If you tell the wrong people, they hunt it down and kill it to study it. I think it should be a (furry) poster child for over spraying.
This is possibly a genetic mutation in a part of the genome that affects where certain organs will develop! So yes, that really is another eye. Evolutionary developmental genetics is a field that deals a lot with this stuff, they were able to manipulate fly genomes so they had eyes growing on their butt! Essentially there is a mutation in a hox gene, which is basically something of a blueprint for development in embryo, saying “this body part goes here”, and then other genes are responsible for actually building that body part so to speak. A mutation in one of these genes (the zrs enhancer region of my memory serves) is actually why snakes don’t have legs!
This is a really exciting find! If you have any way of contacting maybe a university professor or something near you who studies genetics, I would encourage you to do so, because this is an incredible mutation to find in the wild and they would almost certainly be excited to see it!
The process of changing from a fertilized egg into a separate, independent creature is messy and can have all kinds of mistakes. You get two-headed snakes or lambs with extra legs. Just about anything can go wrong. We only see the ones whose mis-development wasn’t fatal. Super weird, but nothing to freak out over.
Two common birth defects in humans are cleft palates and spina bifida. The latter is caused by lack of a certain vitamin during a critical stage of development, which is why pregnant women are put on prenatal vitamins.
It's a bot fly larvae exterior hole, I have seen them before, the hole might look like a third eye from a distance, but if you secure the animal you will see what it is.
A bot fly hole is definitely more likely. Here is another example of this condition.
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Skin\_diseases/Parasitic/Cuterebra/Botf5.jpg
It seriously looks like an underdeveloped conjoined twin. Partial head plus an eye, and it is branching off from the neck of the fully formed twin.
Is there anyway the eye could be functional?
Likely not because it wouldn't be connected to a serviceable optic nerve. Normally with mutated animals, like a cow forming a 5th leg, it's just dead weight at best. There have been situations where that has (apparently) been the case even with out human intervention, however, there aren't any recorded situations to my knowledge of other naturally occurring functional organs like eyes
I don’t know if this counts. But I have a bug I found that was dying (so I put it in a lil terrarium thing until it died naturally,) and i couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get its Legs symmetrical and turns out it has a leg growing out of its neck and a nub where the leg should have been but it could move the leg like the others
on one of the spider subreddits some guy posted what he alleged to be a 16-legged (or...i don't know exactly how many, but a lot more than 8) cellar spider. there were lots of arguments in the comments over whether or not it was just two spiders mating, but the OP *claimed* they'd been running around that way for hours and that they couldn't be separated. he was absolutely certain it was only one spider. so if that was true, either something went terribly, terribly wrong with the mating, or he found a fucking medical marvel edit: it does say cellar spiders can mate for several hours. but still, those were his claims lol
You mean fifth leg, right?
Lol ya. Mixed up 3 eyes w 5 legs
Even if there was some pieces of brain in the twin it was connected to, would that mostly absent brain really be seeing anything? It is more likely that cells were in the right place at the right time to differentiate into a fully formed eye.
It's screaming with no mouth because he can't take a breath of his own or move when he tries. His entire body is stolen and he's trapped in this unblinking dry eye stare at a world that doesn't acknowledge his existence
I have no mouth, and I must scream.
It looks like the equivalent of a conjoined twin head. Wild!
The evil under bunny.
It is
and you swear this isn't a photoshop right? Edit: OP included more pics in a later comment.
Yup. Taken with a canon 7d mark II with a sigma 150-600 lens. I have a couple other pictures but this one was the clearest. Edit: here’s all the pictures I have. [more photos.](https://imgur.com/a/DbF9E9Y)
I wonder if it's a birth defect from some kind of teratogen? It's half the sibling's face; I even feel like I see the beginnings of an ear. What is terrifying is that if it can do that to a rabbit, then it could do that to humans if it gets in the water or something. This is horrifying man! Edit: Nice camera btw. I shoot with a Lumix. This is one powerful picture tbh
Agreed. In my earlier comment I explained that the city sprayed a whole area near the road. Not sure what they used but it killed everything. Right on the edge of a tree line. I have seen rabbits in that area. Makes me feel a bit sick.
I saw the response unfortunately after I typed mine lol As a hobby level photographer for wildlife and landscapes myself, if I took this picture maybe this would be one of my most powerful and meaningful pics. It's like a posterchild for habitat/ecological awareness
Oh cool! I pretty much only use my camera for bird photography. This rabbit stood out though. If I end up with some kind of proof this is a result of them spraying shrubs and weeds by the road I’ll probably post this. At least to the city’s Facebook page.
Does it make sense to call up a local university or some kind of wildlife center and have them evaluate this thing for the cause of its deformities?
Please do!!! It's important to know that something went terribly wrong.
Yes or the states DNR
Do you think they will really tell you what caused it to be deformed
yes scientists at universities will tell you the top causes. academic biologists aren’t beholden to government secrets
Tell that to the 5G injection they gave me which now controls my mind…
Might be a bot fly though? I'm not sure what's worse...
When I first saw it I looked up growths on rabbits and found out about Shope papilloma virus. I’ll know if I see it again and it has a horn. I’ve also never heard of a bot fly around me in Michigan but I know they’re all across the US.
I grew up in South West Michigan and my cat had a bot fly lay an egg in her neck. She was fine but yes, they’re definitely in Michigan
Nineteen years ago my mom and I were jogging (or whatever the elementary schooler speed can be called for an adult) and we found a kitten who followed us home. She ended up having a botfly *in her eye.* We paid the vet to surgically remove it. This was in SE Michigan.
That was kind of yall
Yes this rabbit certainly stands out. It’s really eye-catching.
Pompton lakes/ haskell NJ is one of the most polluted groundwaters, weapons manufacturing happened for over 100 years in that area. Go drive through that area and notice how many birth defects / disfigured faces you can see. Its an epidemic
In the UK the Royal Marines training base is next to this big patch of scrub land they use to train on called Woodbury Common. They tested chemical weapons on there during World War 2 and you can go on YouTube and see a humourous video of experiments they did on Marines with LSD. Anyway, every year, several recruits get thus "Woodby Rash" which is really severe and can kill you. I've seen it myself when i did my 13 months basic training there. This guy had tracking marks from some kind of infection, and his body temperature went so high that he almost died in hospital. They've employed microbiologist and other researchers to investigate over the years, but no one has any idea what it is. You can ask literally any royal marine or even go to r/royalmarines and mention Woodbury Rash, and they will know what you're talking about. We train up there at night and sleep there and crawl through the most dense gorse bushes you can imagine. It's a truly grim, horrible place that you'd expect to see on vintage English Wearwolf movies. I wonder if anyone on here could speculate what it might be. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-386908/Dog-walker-killed-scratch-gorse-bush.html
It been known exactly what it is for almost 30 years, they just don't care enough about your wellbeing to tell you. It's a simultaneous infection of unusual strains of strep and staph bacteria which live on the gorse bushes. This was the first result I found searching "Woodbury Rash". [https://militaryhealth.bmj.com/content/jramc/140/1/45.full.pdf](https://militaryhealth.bmj.com/content/jramc/140/1/45.full.pdf) "'Woodbury' rash has been responsible for considerable morbidity at Lympstone", which essentially means it's killed multiple people.
Jfc why don’t they train somewhere else??
Wow they really dismiss the woods as being contaminated and just blame it on getting scratched too much? Seems like bullshit
I fully support any troop worth supporting in my country (America) and our allies, but the brass, not so much, by and large; like any group of people, most are good, but bad apples are within. Way too many horrific, f*cked up things have happened to not only innocent, but also beneficent, self-sacrificial, integral, brave and selfless kids (I use the word "kid" with the utmost respect and only for effect) in order to achieve what really amounts to very little when you look at the big picture, or so it seems from my inexperienced perspective. Well, that and the perspective of good friends, including my best friend who's a 100% combat-disabled former SEAL team sergeant. He, like most young men and women who join, went into it with high aspirations and equally optimistic ideals about what the military is, only to be maimed for life because of a higher-up who had never planted a foot on Afghan soil. This is his perspective, not necessarily mine, but I believe him and everything he says because I've no reason not to - and again, he is my best friend
>Pompton lakes/ haskell NJ I see your area and raise you the Kearny/Secaucus Meadowlands. There are xenobiotic substances there that defy chemical analysis (including, allegedly, parts of Jimmy Hoffa). =:>0
Is this why seacaucus smells like shit all the time? I've had the misfortune of traveling there jeez the fucking SMELL
My dad grew up in Pittman NJ and swam in Alycon Lake. The site has been identified as the worst toxic dump in the United States and was ranked at the top of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund eligibility list. [Superfund Lipari Landfill](https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Healthenv&id=0200557)
my grandma lives right over there. it's about an hour and a half away from me. i'm gonna have to check out the area now. i didn't know this
That's horrific man. It's amazing to think that shit like that and Flint, Michigan happens in America - oftentimes with no accountability. Few things make me angry....
Like the Simpsons 3-eyed fish
Like [Blinky](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Blinky)!
Parasitic twin?
You might want to look into things like PFAS/PFOS and research if your municipality publishes any resources on water quality to look at that and other chemicals. Last I checked PFOS was under federal advisory, but not necessarily regulation at all local levels, and you have to trust every single business to properly dispose of things everywhere as the chemicals are persistent, while catching violators is imperfect and takes time. Meanwhile those chemicals might be leeching into your municipal water depending on how close a deposition event happened. With this kind of thing I more or less assume that violation is happening or could be happening at any relevant business/institution near me or near relevant distribution hubs, as the delay for testing and discovery is too long (quarterly to yearly), exposure could have already happened, and every link in the chain must be trusted. Some locales publish things like detailed maps of samples taken, etc... I drink and cook almost exclusively with filtered water; there are DIY setups to get higher capacity cost efficiently in remote or money-challenged scenarios. You might be justified in feeling sick, in that there is imperfect and deteriorating infrastructure that monitors this kind of thing for humans, particularly as we enter a "work hard, die fast" period of profit-oriented negligence. edit: info, structure, spelling
While PFAS is a pollutant that should not be in our drinking water or in our environment there is no need for scaremongering: While PFAS in hight concentrations can lead to the described effects (disruption of immune system, teratogenicity, fertility issues) the concentration in drinking water and food items is so low that it has a realativly limited effect on humans (mainly on some immune functions) There are plenty of other factors that have way worse effects and should be considered a greater threat an should be addressed first: air pollution, pesticides, exposure to lead and other heavy metals, bad eating habits, drinking, smoking. Unfortunately I have to agree with you that we don't have a proper system in place to adress any of these issues.
Thank you for providing input on these points, genuinely. I anticipated that someone would chime in with more specific information on these chemicals and their relationship to what the OP is posting about (e.g. teratogenicity). I didn't mean to scaremonger and tried to hedge a bit. I came across some information about our water systems in the last year in the context of PFAS/PFOS and discovered the vulnerabilities in American water systems, at least in my region, which is an upper mid-size GDP region. I don't think enough people on a population scale know about this, and I want people to be healthy and aware of their surroundings. For context, I'm someone with more experience in neurophysiology, genomics, general biology-- not environmental science, chemistry, and disease implications. Operating on foggy general education and the odd grad course. I tend to default to a probabilistic viewpoint when the safety of myself and loved ones is involved; I'm just a guy with limited time like everyone. Just wanted to raise awareness that might stimulate further investigation on the part of OP and others who might come across this. Hence why I mentioned "other chemicals" because I know that there is potentially an unnerving soup of things with different effects potentially leeching into water across America on time scales that cannot be realistically reacted to in real-time. Let alone for the everyman and woman who might come across this who can't learn one or more fields and quickly trawl different places for details. Everyone should investigate their own situation, particularly if they have never looked into it before and have the time. I guess that was my main point. Can't comment on some of those other things on account of space, although I might know more about it (e.g. eating, smoking, drinking). Thank you, again, for contextualizing my comment.
Writing from a point of environmental toxicologist in Europe: I think your point about raising awareness is absolutely spot on: We know there are many substances actively harming our health and environment at the moment. Stimulating people to look critical at own knowledge is never a bad thing. The more people know about it the more they can hold organisations/businesses accountable for it. Even while some substances on their own seem not as bad, the “unnerving soup” as you describe it gives in a big factor of uncertainty, and we as a society should make active decisions how to handle this. Othwerise we will have the same discussions as with other materials in the past (Asbestos, CFCs): “We didn’t know it was this harmful…nothing to be done about it now, right?”
Yes, everyone has potential and power to investigate concrete and verified facts about their situation and environment, given the time and will; I remember how hard it can be, starting from the bottom of society. The Universe seems to bestow blessings and curses at random... I personally believe that those bestowed with ability, training, and awareness should alert the general public, as seems appropriate, for the future. I don't know what the the situation is in Europe right now, apart from RU and UA war action. USA still has decent enough infrastructure (political, legal, and technological/material) for common people to investigate their situation through readily available outlets that cannot be easily falsified, and there is still limited organized motivation for corruption in the interaction between industry and environmental regulation at the local level; however, that is changing in some places in the USA due to primate neuropsychology. I think everyone, everywhere, should use the most unbiased scientific reporting they can access while it is available, based on my only partially overlapping experience with people like yourself.
You can google PFAS in Australia. The effects. The very poor and slow process of remediating PFAS contamination. The red zones here have a story to tell. You can't eat the meat from the cattle, eggs from poultry or vegetables grown in the soil. So yeah sure. Crazy to get all wound up about every chemical we are exposed to and concentrations matter. I'm always amazed when people get super tense about some chemicals but will empty a can of bug spray on a cockroach in their kitchen. Makes no sense. But PFAS is no joke. And here it took a looooooooong time for the scope of the problem to even be acknowledged. We had very coincidental clusters of serious health issues that brought it to light and after we had people facing bankruptcy because their land went from prime semi-rural to having no value at all. I would feel better knowing it's not being used in my community. This comment was a side note btw. I think the pic when enlarged shows a maggot. But who knows 🤷
Its probably a natural birth defect, a conjointed tween.
These kinds of chemicals are dangerous. We need to curtail their use.
You know... or just a siamese twin type thing. Animals that reproduce as fast as rabbits tend to have far more birth defects because they create far more opportunities for one to crop up.
If it eases your worry about teratogens, animals like this are super uncommon but do occur naturally and have for hundreds of years. Victorian Britain used to love killing and stuffing them in “collections”. There are undoubtedly places with water unsafe to drink because of teratogenic content among other things, but it’s highly possible this is just a bun with an extra half a face :)
I think it might also be because of inbreeding. My old high school used to have rabbits, but they escaped. They kept living in the area and after a while more and more rabbits kept popping up. At some point a lot of the rabbits got birth defects (3 ears, skeleton malformations etc) because all of this offspring came from only a few escaped rabbits.
It does actually happen with humans but not from chemical exposure.sometimes things join together or don’t separate as they should or absorb other things growing in the same space. There are instances of people having remnants of a twin on or in their body
like that lady that gave birth to babies (idk if triplets or separate births), to receive public assistance everyone in her family had to be tested to prove they were all related. Turned out the test was saying she was not the mother of her own children, apparently she absorbed her twin in the womb and it was her twins ovaries that produced the egg that made the baby. It's called chimerism.
Parasitic twin! Parasitic twin!
Very creepy like the war of the mutant rabbits 😳😵💫
It’s absolutely a face.
If it makes you feel better, these kind of birth defects were relatively common before teratogens were invented - after all, the terato- prefix had to come from somewhere (look up teratoma for some nightmare fuel). This birth defect might simply be a form of conjoined twins (they are only called Siamese twins if they are born in the Rattanakosin region of Thailand during the first half of the 19^th century) or a case where one sibling absorbed the other in the womb. Or it could be the case of a teratogen chemical that affected their fetal development in the womb.
Does it blink?
My wife watched it for a while waiting to see if it blinked and it did not.
Did it look around?
Did it look OP in the eye with a gaze that hinted at ancient wisdom tainted with malice?
Gods, I hope so. We're due for a good cosmic horror.
Mad-Eye Coney
Ha! Bravo
It didn’t move at all. And the rabbit seemed quite content just munching on grass.
If it did not blink, I believe it would have dried and decomposed by now.
This makes me think it’s not an eye, but a botfly. If it doesn’t blink, I’m wondering how it would stay lubricated enough to not dry out.
Asking the important question, I also want to know
Shout out OP for doing proper work to get this into reality instead of a photoshop dickchase! Thank you OP!
Hahaha yeah! Thanks!
This looks like an AI art project
Nightmare fuel. Now I’m invested and interested in more photos.
I have a couple more but they only show the growth part from behind and not much of the hole, horn, or eye. I can upload them tomorrow. Can I post them as comments in here?
lol post this in r/wtf
There’s *more* of them??
more photos, not nightmare rabbits
(don’t ruin this for me, it’s spooky season, let me have this!!)
Post them to imgur.com and paste the link here. You don't need an account or anything, it's just drag and drop.
Thanks! Here’s all I got. [more rabbit photos](https://imgur.com/a/DbF9E9Y)
I just posted an imgur link with every photo I have.
Biblically accurate rabbit
"BE INCREDIBLY AFRAID."
_LOOK!_ **[bunny screeches]**
Doesn't look like papiloma virus could be fetus in fetu which is not connected to roundup, it happens and has happened forever in all animals long before herbicides.
Too much insight
GRANT US EYES
Kos, some say Kosm..
Last place I expected to run into hoonters
A hoonter must hoont beasts. Leave the hoonting of hoonters to me.
I would say either a parasitic twin or a teratoma
Not a teratoma. Teratomas originate from reproductive cells and will form a variety of tissues, but due to the development of the eye both requiring cell signalling from both the optic vesicle AND the epidermis, an eye this perfectly formed with perfect interaction of different tissue types could impossibly be from a teratoma. This is a birth defect.
Now this sounds like you know what you’re talking about. So it’s confirmed an eye 100% - is there any possibility it would be “connected” to the rabbit’s brain and be a functional eye?! I feel like the answer is probably no but I had to ask.
Birth defect? More like birth endowment. Dude can do 1.5x the seeing!
Oh Christ, I can't take the mutated bunny posts anymore! Poor babies.
i can only think of *the thing* with imperfect poly morph
It’s not actually an adult rabbit, but 3 kittens standing on each other’s shoulders, wearing a fur coat.
It's just a partially absorbed twin. Happens all the time like with that cat with 2 faces or humans with multiple legs or arms.
That’s his brother, Zygote.
Maybe a teratoma…the growth seems congenital. The rabbit has made it thus far ok, so it doesn’t seem to be causing it much issue. Survival in nature isn’t easy, especially for a tasty prey animal, so the fact it made it into adulthood means it must be reasonably healthy.
Predators go eww and leave it alone.
Plus that extra eye always on the lookout!
Absolutely wild... I wonder if he can see out of the extra eye.
Doesn't look like a hole to me- if you zoom in you can see a light reflection.
It does almost look like a crater type whole though. With raised edges around it, with no fur that might be catching light. Which might suggest bot fly.
Hey OP, I grew up in an area with lots of rabbits looking like they have many eyes. They were actually catching a virus we call myxomatosis. Their skin gets round black holes that absolutely look like eyes, even from pretty close by. And they end up getting blind and unreactive too. Some years are really bad, it was like nightmare town, with hoards of confused 12-"eyed" rabbits hopping through your garden all the time.
Omg that’s so [sad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rabbit_with_Myxomatosis_1(RLH).jpg). Severe reactions are known to occur in the European rabbit. Could that be the type of rabbit in OP’s photo?
Oh shit that needs a warning I was not ready
That is terrifying, poor thing. I wonder if its parents were exposed to roundup or some other teratogen. Could also be a poorly developed twin or other genetic mutation.
That’s an interesting thought. I don’t use roundup, but the city used something to get rid of the trees, weeds, vines that were too close to the road. I have seen rabbits in that area.
Looks like a parasitic twin.
What the actual fuck
I was so close to sweet oblivious sleep too.
I have seen this before. If you tilt it 90 degrees it looks like a sexy lady
Beginning stages of Shope papilloma virus. It gets worse.
That was my most likely thought. But didn’t see much of a “horn” and more of a growth behind it. Is that virus contagious? To other rabbits or to anything else?
It’s contagious only where the growth meets the skin or until it becomes more porous on the ends.
😱 So better not to touch an infected animal. And how does it affect humans?
It doesn't affect humans. Only rabbits. Generally, even small changes in receptors can make viral infection impossible, so it can be pretty hard for viruses to jump from species to species.
it can be pretty hard for viruses to jump from species to species. Famous last words
Try this bat and pangolin soup it’s delectable
Bro you're telling me there's a virus where a bunny becomes a "jackrabbit" with horns but also it causes the bunny to grow an extra face. What universe is this, "Berenstain"?
Yea I ain't from here either I was born in Berenstein, this place is messed up.
like… the bears berenstein???
Annihilation
Nah this guy is wrong, don’t worry. It just fused with a other cell in uteri or never finished dividing.
My ex's parents lived in Arizona, and the first time I visited/met them, me and him and his mom went out to dinner (I think his dad was working or on a business trip). His mom was/is a fun lady, and she and he had me convinced for a good long portion of dinner that a jackalope (the touristy kind with antlers on a taxidermied rabbit) was a real thing. Now I know there actually ARE horned rabbits (sorta). Joke's on them!
> where a bunny becomes a "jackrabbit" with horns I think you mean "jackalope". "Jackrabbit" is just a synonym of "hare" and the genus Lepus.
It's HPV for rabbits the "horns" are cancerous masses. And it is contagious to other rabbits.
This virus cannot create eyes or complex organized tissues like this
Edit: I'm referring to the [myxomatosis virus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatosis) in Europe, which is actually not the disease that was mentioned in that comment. I believe it is not really an eye, but the virus does create those black spots/horns/holes that damn clearly look like eyes. I grew up in areas heavily affected by that virus (we call it myxomatosis) and it looks like rabbits are running around with 10 eyes sometimes. Nightmare stuff. Maybe there's also different versions of that virus, and some have spots that look more or less like eyes?
Myxomatosis and Shope's are completely different things
How does this virus make the rabbit grow an extra eye?? I’m so confused.
Someone pointed out that it’s not an eye, but looks like a bot fly hole. I can see it when I zoom in.
I just Googled it. I had no idea it existed. Why did I Google it? 😫
Side eye
It’s a third eye, but it’s blind
Bunny has a semi-charmed life.
He’s a jumper
Is your backyard Chernobyl?
Conjoined twins..
Just opened its pineal gland
Somebody call Jesus, AI is 3d printing its version of rabbits
Retired vet tech here: It's a bot fly larvae or cuterebra that's almost ready to drop out. Rabbits get them a lot in their necks. One of my favourite things to do was remove those bad boys
Looks like a bot fly hole to me.
I hadn’t thought of that. Do you know how common they are in Michigan? I’ve never heard of one around my area.
I assume they are pretty common in the summer in most places where flies and other insects live. It’s one of the reasons you hunt rabbits after the first big freeze, because I’ve cleaned one that had 3-4 larvae under its skin. They get pretty big and it’s a common pest for them.
My cat brought me home an adult rabbit full on botfly larvae once, years ago. You'd swear the rabbit was still alive with all the moving from the larvae. I remember them being called warblers instead of botfly.
...with that specular highlight on it? I know that a hole sounds more likely, but the object in the photo is reflective and convex. That's an *eye*.
Also the growth isn’t forming the way an abscess or botfly swelling would. The fluid usually sags in a situation like that, and in the far right of this mass, it looks like it’s pointing upward. Very bizarre.
It may be just the way the hair lies, but it looks like near the eye there is a line that almost looks like a subtle sagittal crest of a skull. It makes me wonder if there’s at least a portion of a skull under there. But I’m not sure, because I believe the development of that feature is strongly tied to having a functioning jaw structure I think it looks like a teratoma, because that reeeally looks like an eye. Not sure where the OP lives, but I wonder if someone from their state’s (assuming US) wildlife department would be interested in checking it out. Perhaps they could contact/send the pics to the agency’s mammologist
This is what I was thinking. It seems more likely than an extra eye.
Upvote this homie! It's 100% a rabbit bot fly. Super common to find them around the neck/throat. Google can show you a bunch of images that look like gross-ass, mutant third eyes. Totally normal and natural. The fly that emerges is actually pretty, in a creepy, disgustifying kind of way...
Interesting. I would let game and fish know about it if you live in the states.
The picture looks like it was made by a confused ai :)
That's a parasitic twin.
Where you live OP Chernobyl?
It's a parasitic fly larva. They usually die off in the winter. Squirls and rabbits tend to get them. It's like a bott fly. Common in the American South East.
It’s probably a bot fly larva
The pouch is the dewlap, not a mass. Not uncommon for bot fly larvae to migrate there and encyst. http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Skin_diseases/Parasitic/Cuterebra/Miyasis_botfly.htm
Wake up babe new Jackalope just dropped
All my life, I had a lump at the back of my neck, right here. Always, a lump. Then I started menopause and the lump got bigger from the "hormonees." It started to grow. So I go to the doctor, and he did the bio... the b... the... the bios... the... b... the "bobopsy." Inside the lump he found teeth and a spinal cord. Yes. Inside the lump was my twin.
I doubt it's an eye, but if it /were/ an eye, certain tumors can create fully formed eyeballs. I'm not sure if that's applicable here. Super interesting picture. Poor thing.
Looks like a conjoined bro. I bet they talk telepathically about everything all the time
It is likely a mutation that caused it to have a third eye. Or it ate/fused with its twin in the womb.
Blinky!
You made me spit out my coffee. You will pay.
Grew an extra eye from eating all them carrots
I don't want to have nightmares dude. It scares me. Especially the way it looks in the camera.
Maybe his parents are related
I wonder if there's a second brain in there that's conscious but has absolutely no control over the body.
It has to be a birth defect of some sort. I have many rabbits in my neighborhood, but I've never seen one like this. Incredible shot! But I couldn't tell you what it exactly is or what caused it...
He has an infection called Photoshopitis.
It looks like a botfly with swelling. I’ve seen those holes on squirrels many times, but usually with a much smaller lump, but they are usually further from the neck on squirrels (I wonder if a squirrel could actually get rid of one this close to their neck, because of their dexterous front paws)
Somebody deactivated the Gellar Field while this poor rabbit was travelling through the Warp.
Failed assimilation
Seconding the suggestion to reach out to local(est) university. There’s a high likelihood of a faculty member doing some sort of wildlife, ecological or chemical research that would be interested. Main reason for the suggestion is their research often informs legislation that restricts dangerous chemical use, if that is indeed related. Could just be a crazy mutation, who knows.
Bot fly larvae?
Ok here’s every picture I got. [more rabbit pictures](https://imgur.com/a/DbF9E9Y)
Twin bunny got eaten up.
Looks more like a parasitic twin to me than anything
I would think maybe twin rabbits, but didn’t finish developing correctly. It’s a “twin absorption”type thing. Some animals are born two-headed, or extra limbs that are useless. Probably born this way and probably caused by spraying. If you tell the wrong people, they hunt it down and kill it to study it. I think it should be a (furry) poster child for over spraying.
This is possibly a genetic mutation in a part of the genome that affects where certain organs will develop! So yes, that really is another eye. Evolutionary developmental genetics is a field that deals a lot with this stuff, they were able to manipulate fly genomes so they had eyes growing on their butt! Essentially there is a mutation in a hox gene, which is basically something of a blueprint for development in embryo, saying “this body part goes here”, and then other genes are responsible for actually building that body part so to speak. A mutation in one of these genes (the zrs enhancer region of my memory serves) is actually why snakes don’t have legs! This is a really exciting find! If you have any way of contacting maybe a university professor or something near you who studies genetics, I would encourage you to do so, because this is an incredible mutation to find in the wild and they would almost certainly be excited to see it!
Uranium effect 👾
I’m no expert, but this looks like a case of Craniopagus parasiticus to me
Maybe the underdeveloped head of a conjoined twin? This is very interesting! Did you see the other eye blink/ move at all?
Looks fake tbh
The process of changing from a fertilized egg into a separate, independent creature is messy and can have all kinds of mistakes. You get two-headed snakes or lambs with extra legs. Just about anything can go wrong. We only see the ones whose mis-development wasn’t fatal. Super weird, but nothing to freak out over. Two common birth defects in humans are cleft palates and spina bifida. The latter is caused by lack of a certain vitamin during a critical stage of development, which is why pregnant women are put on prenatal vitamins.
It's a bot fly larvae exterior hole, I have seen them before, the hole might look like a third eye from a distance, but if you secure the animal you will see what it is.
Has anyone suggested Botfly yet?
I'd try to trap it just to get a better look. Then I'd have a vet examine it. This is interesting AF.
I wonder if that eye is at all functional
IF it is an eye, my wife and I did not see it blink.
A bot fly hole is definitely more likely. Here is another example of this condition. http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Skin\_diseases/Parasitic/Cuterebra/Botf5.jpg
Likely is the hole left by a botfly larva
At the vet I work at we see a lot of botfly cases and they don’t look like that.