- An Iranian newspaper has reported the controversial story
of a woman who claims to have given birth to a frog.
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- The Iranian daily Etemaad says the creature is believed
to have grown from larva to an adult frog inside her body.
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- While it is unclear how this could have happened, the
paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there are human characteristics
to the animal.
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- It has been speculated that the woman, who has not been
named, unknowingly picked up the larva while she was swimming in a dirty
pool.
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- The woman, from the south-eastern city of Iranshahr,
is a mother of two children.
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- The "so-called frog", as the newspaper puts
it, has yet to undergo precise genetic and anatomic tests.
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- But it quotes clinical biology expert Dr Aminifard as
saying: "The similarities are in appearance, the shape of the fingers
and the size and shape of the tongue."
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- Medical history recounts stories of people who believed
they had frogs - or even lizards or snakes - living and growing in their
bodies.
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- One of the most famous was the 17th Century case of Catharina
Geisslerin, known as "the toad-vomiting woman" of Germany.
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- When she died in 1662 doctors are said to have performed
an autopsy, but found no evidence animals had ever lived inside her body.
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- - BBC Monitoring , based in Caversham in southern England,
selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news
agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
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- © BBC MMIV
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- http://NEWS.BBC.CO.UK/2/hi/middle_east/3844441.stm
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