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How To Grow Your Own Unicorn
As early as 1906, man was tampering with nature to convince people that unicorns do exist. According to various sources on modern unicorn history, the country of Nepal in Asia presented two male sheep with unicorn horns, along with an assortment of other animals, as a gift to the Prince of Wales. They were displayed at a London zoo, and it was eventually discovered that they had two horn buds (bits of horn producing tissue) instead of one under the horn sheath, thus revealing that the single horn was not a natural occurrenceā they had been created artificially.
People have been creating unicorns for hundreds of years by transplanting horn buds to the front of sheep and goats.
In 1933, Dr. W. Franklin Dove at the University of Maine set out to prove it. He performed an operation on an Ayrshire bull calf. Both of its horn buds were transplanted to the center of its skull so that they lay side by side over the frontal division of the skull. By trimming the normally round in horn buds so that they were flat along the sides where they touched. Dove's experiment was successful.
He later reported that when the bull was 2 1/2 years old, he used his single horn as a forward thrusting bayonet in his attacks. "While a two-horned animal must make side cuts and slashes, the unicorn can put its full body weight behind its one horn. It becomes almost invincible."
Dr. Dove's unicorn bull became the leader of its herd and was very rarely challenged by other males. When bulls charge each other the main aim is to crack skulls until one or other can take no more. Charging toward an enemy who has a spike aimed right between your eyes is a different game altogether.
In the early 1980's, a California couple patented a "third horn" method and then licensed the procedure to Ringling Bros. Circus. He said the goats appeared to have undergone a simple graft in which their own natural horn was made to grow in an unnatural part of their heads.
"If you use anesthesia and it's done by a competent person, it's basically a simple tissue graft," he says.


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2003 - Volume #27, Issue #4