A Pig With a Monkey's Face?!

You thought you had seen it all, but a piglet in a small village in China was born with what appeared to be the face of a monkey, complete with forward facing eyes, a thick brow, and a simian jaw. It has since died.

The piglet in question was born of a regular and healthy sow owned by a family in Fengzhang village, Xiping township, according to local media reports. It came complete with not only its unusual face and bulging forehead, but two smaller front legs to boot.

The animal quickly became something of a local tourist attraction, with people coming from across the region to photograph its remarkable and somewhat disturbing features.

The Feng family, who owned the piglet and its mother, actually wanted to get rid of the animal soon after its birth, as its horrifying features worried them and certainly meant they couldn't sell it, according to local Chinese media through The Telegraph.

However, according to Feng Changlin, the head of the household, their son had asked to keep the piglet, and played with it and fed it milk, even as it blindly hopped around.

It's important to note that this was no hybrid animal or experiment gone wrong. The sow who birthed it also birthed five healthy piglets who do not boast these unusual simian-like features.

Instead, many have speculated that the features are the coincidental result of a relatively common birth defect in the brain that leads to incredibly closely spaced eyes and severe skull malformation.

In most cases of the defect, called holoprosencephaly, the malformations are so severe that the baby dies before birth. However, in this case the piglet somehow survived the ordeal, despite the fact that it likely had a single lobed brain structure, lacking cerebral space.

It remains unclear how long exactly the animal survived, but it probably died of compounding problems, including malnutrition. It had not been getting essential nutrients from its mother, who would not care for it.

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