Tom Leppard – The Tattooed Leopard Man
Tom Leppard was once an officer in the British Special Forces. Upon retiring, the thought of tattooing his entire body was suddenly irresistible. Deciding he wasn’t in a very creative mood, he more or less just said, “well, my last name’s Leppard…that sounds just like ‘leopard!’” and thus the Leopard Man was born. Leppard’s tattoos cost him over £5,500, which he more than recouped by maintaining a strict diet of Friskies and the occasional mouse. The reclusive yet friendly Leopard Man lived in a secluded bothy on the Island of Skye until 2008, when his age began to catch up with him and he moved back to the mainland. We’re guessing he didn’t swim, given his feline predilections.
Chimeras – Science’s attempt to freak us the hell out
The idea of the mythical chimera – a beast said to be part human and part animal – has, in recent years, been brought terrifyingly into the realm of reality by scientists at China’s Shanghai Medical University. The team of scientists managed to successfully fuse human cells with rabbit eggs, allowing the resultant embryos to develop for several days in Petri dishes until they
Jocelyn Wildenstein – The Cat Woman
Wildenstein is more or less a walking anti-cosmetic surgery ad. Her puffed-up face and ridiculously overworked eyes make her look more like she is on the verge of having her face explode than it does a cat. Perhaps Face-On-the-Verge-of-Exploding Woman was already taken, or maybe she couldn’t pronounce it through those lips. Apparently, Jocelyn originally began having the work done because she was fearful of losing the affections of her rich, art-dealer husband, who had a fondness for jungle cats. Eventually, and not-so-shockingly, he did leave her, yet she continued her transformation, maybe hoping she would one day get a chance to savagely maul the man who broke her heart.
Alex – The Humanimal
If you are currently asking yourself what in god’s name a humanimal is… Good. You are perfectly normal. Alex is a humanimal, and a damn good one at that. On his YouTube channel you can see him dressed and painted as a bunny, bull, dog, horse, deer, and many other animals, posing with his muscular physique in way that will haunt your dreams for at least a few months, if not longer. Alex only joined YouTube in October of 2009 and has already uploaded 22 videos, all humanimal-related, and based on this we can expect much more from this enterprising young fellow/weirdo.
Eric Sprague – The Lizardman
Eric Sprague steadfastly holds on to his title as the Lizardman. Sure, there are lizards who are more lizardy than he, but that’s it. Even snakes are like, ‘nope, that guy is more of a lizard than I am. I can’t touch that. I’d love to applaud him but, you know.’ Sprague has gone the hard yards to look the way he does: almost his entire body is covered in green scale tattoos, he has subdermal implants, he has had his tongue bifurcated (split in two), his teeth are filed to sharp points, and he enjoys basking on warm rocks. Sprague has also expressed the desire to get a tail transplant in the near future. From what, a komodo dragon?
Furries
Furries are people who enact a particular brand of fandom which involves dressing up in elaborate animal costumes called fursuits. It’s a common misconception that the primary enactment of furry fandom is sexual. This apparently isn’t true, but let’s face it; it’s still pretty weird. If you’re not yet convinced as to this aforementioned weirdness, then consider this: furries can spend anywhere between $500 and $10,000 on a fursuit, which is probably enough to genetically engineer whatever kind of crazy fox-human hybrid that they’re dressing up as in the first place. Anything for the fursona.
Dennis Avner – The Cat Man
A picture’s worth a thousand purrs, and it’s hard to look at Dennis Avner, AKA The Cat Man, without noticing the extreme lengths he has gone to in order to look like a tiger. His teeth have been filed and capped with fangs, he has had surgery on his lip to give it that feline cleft, and he has piercings above his lip to which he can attach cat’s whiskers. In addition to this, he wears cat contact lenses to give him that eerie feline stare. Dennis admits to loving climbing trees and eating raw meat — and we’re not talking about sushi. His transformation began when a Native American tribal elder suggested to him that he follow the ways of the cat, a suggestion he took to like a cat to… extreme body modifications.
Rochom P’ngieng – The Half-Animal Jungle Woman
Rochom P’ngieng was discovered in 2007 by a farmer who noticed that something (or someone) was stealing food from a lunch box he had left on his property. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing and her speech was completely unintelligible. The farmer had to literally ‘capture’ the girl with the help of some of his friends. Rochom, it turns out, had disappeared at the age of eight and spent a grand total of 19 years subsisting alone in the harsh Cambodian jungle. Now 27, it seemed as though she had little recollection of her human life and had completely assimilated to a life in the wild. He parents, who had understandably given up hope of her ever being found, were delighted to have their daughter back, though slightly disappointed at her sloppy table manners.
Extreme Avatar Fans Try to Make Their Own Pandurrrra
Apparently the immerse aspects of James Cameron’s recent epic, Avatar, were too much for some intrepid moviegoers. After the screening, a significant portion of viewers expressed to their $400-an-hour psychiatrists severe feelings of depression at the unattainable nature of the film’s Utopian planet, Pandora. They were promptly given Xanax in a special cross-promotional blue capsule to quell their fears and longings. Some fans of the film took things to a new extreme when they began dressing up as Navi’i in order to come closer to the perfect world they saw in the film. As of yet, none have been able to successfully ride a Turok or do anything other than get a lot of weird stares.
Coyote Osborne – The Coyote Were
Coyote Osborne is unique on this list in that he does not aspire to be an animal, but rather believes that he is already a Coyote, born into a human body. He says that he must artificially force himself to take on human traits and customs, which, to him, feel strange and unnatural. Coyote, who was born with the more normal name of John, identifies with a long line of such ‘animal spirits’ known as weres who have existed throughout history. Coyote doesn’t try to take on any of the physical or behavioral characteristics of the Coyote, such as hunting wild prey or hating the Acme Corporation, but rather experiences his animalism on a more spiritual level through his artwork and research into were history.
Stephan Bibrowski – Lionel The Lion-Faced Man
Stephan Bibrowski was born near Warsaw, Poland, in 1891. He was stricken with a rare disease called hypertrichosis, which causes thick (in this case blonde) hair to grow all over his body. Instead of undergoing extreme laser hair removal treatment, which was very expensive in the 1800s, Stephen decided to embrace his condition and reinvent himself as Lionel, the Lion-Faced man. He soon found his way to the famous Coney Island Freakshow, where he found great success. The hair on his face — his mane — grew to a staggering length of eight inches, while the hair on the rest of his body (which grew absolutely everywhere except for his palms and the soles of his feet) maintained an impressive length of four inches. Bibrowski eventually retired back to Europe in his later years, dying far too young for a lion-man of his stature at age 41.
Oleg Kulik – The Dog Man
Oleg Kulik is a Ukrainian-born, Russian performance artist based in Moskow. A large portion of his exhibitive performances involve him taking on the persona of a dog in order to comment on modern society and act upon his extreme hatred of fire hydrants. Perhaps his most infamous performance took place in 1996 at the Interpol group exhibition in Stockholm, where Kurlik chained himself to a sign that read ‘dangerous.’ Not only did Kurlik physically attack anyone foolhardy enough to come close to his reach, go as far as to bite one man, but he destroyed much of the other art at the exhibit in his fits of canine rage. There are plenty of dogs who don’t go around ruining people’s art like douchebags, but then again, there are probably some that do, and it seems Kurlik sees fit to make his comment on the crises of contemporary culture by destroying others’ attempts to rationalize it. That makes sense, right?
Katzen the Tiger Lady
Katzen the Tiger Lady is a performance artist who has had almost her entire body tattooed to resemble that of a tiger, even though ‘katzen’ is the German word for ‘cats’. Maybe the German word for ‘tiger,’ which is ‘tiger,’ just wasn’t exotic enough for her tastes. Besides her full body tattooing,Katzen has also had piercings done on her face that allow her to attach whiskers whenever she is performing. For a long time, Katzen was married to another heavily tattooed performer,The Enigma, whose tattoos were completed by Katzen herself, before their union. Katzen has had two litters of one – a daughter named Caitlin and a son named Felix. Noticing a trend?
Horace Ridler – The Great Omi/The Zebra Man
Horace Ridler was once a mild-mannered London gentleman, born to an upper-class family and possessing a healthy inheritance. After the death of his father and some poor investments, he enlisted in the British army at the outset of World War II and was decorated for his outstanding conduct and gallantry. When he returned from the war, however, Horace’s life was to take a bizarre turn: he resolved to become the world’s most tattooed man. Horace was most often billed as ‘The Great Omi’, but occasionally as ‘The Zebra Man,’ after the animal upon which he modeled his tattoos. Honestly though, with the almost aqueous look of his inkings, Horace looks more like a full-body version of Rorschach from Watchmen than a zebra. Maybe the tattooist had never really seen a Zebra. Maybe he was on morphine. Whatever the case, Horace Ridler will remain a major figure in the annals of sideshow history.
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