http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060109/480/nyet27501091906 

Cy, short for Cyclopes, a kitten born with only one eye and no nose, is shown in this photo provided by its owner in Redmond, Oregon, on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005. The kitten, a ragdoll breed, which died after living for one day, was one of two in the litter. Its sibling was born normal and healthy. (AP Photo/Traci Allen)

Back with Mother nature. Best thing.

I remember cyclops anomalies in humans when studying developmental biology. It's kind of alien & cute-ish in a kitten, but utterly and starkly horrifying in humans.

Photoshop??

A kittens eyes aren't open for several weeks after birth.

John L

Oh, Pep, did you ever get to go to a "jar zoo"? I went to the one at the U of M Vet Science department. It was absolutely amazing. Kind of like the pathology lab at the morgue, only not quite so repulsive because they are animals and not humans.

I did most of my academic work on bacteria Ruggys. The hairiest we ever did was grinding up chicken empryos, which I happen to love with smoked ham & jack cheese. Never took anatomy or had to work with human cadavers, me not like. I did see a lot of Frankenstein work on mice, which is pretty much the industry standard; do knock-out mutations on mice and observe the affects: creepy but highly productive.

Now, developmental biology in humans was hard for me to look at, even in a book, because all the things that can go wrong do go wrong at one time or another, and sometimes they live. It's just hard to see infants suffering.

I saw the exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, of babies. They had a different container with an unborn baby in each. There were quite a few of them, in every stage, from a short time after conception all the way to birth. You could see the development in all the weeks from conception to birth. When you tell someone about it it normally seems gross, but it was a beautiful and touching thing the way they presented the exhibit. Tuck

JD beat me to it. No way that's real.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/cyclopes.asp 

Real

The snopes report confirms that cyclopic kittens are real.

I don't think they confirm that this particular picture is real.

I could be, but it looks fake.

It's Real, alright . . .

-----------------------------------------------------------

One-eyed cat in photo seen on Internet has medical basis

By TERRENCE PETTY

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published on: 01/11/06

PORTLAND, Ore. — A photo of a one-eyed kitten named Cy drew more than a little skepticism when it turned up on various Web sites, but medical authorities have a name for the bizarre condition.

"Holoprosencephaly" causes facial deformities, according to the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health. In the worst cases, a single eye is located where the nose should be, according to the institute's Web site.

Traci Allen says the kitten she named Cy, short for Cyclops, was born the night of Dec. 28 with the single eye and no nose.

"You don't expect to see something like that," the 35-year-old Allen said by telephone from her home in Redmond in central Oregon.

Allen said she stayed up all night with the deformed kitten on her recliner, feeding Cy a liquid formula through a syringe. She says she cared for the kitten the next day as well, until it died that evening.

Allen had taken digital pictures that she provided to The Associated Press. Some bloggers have questioned the authenticity of the photo distributed on Jan. 6.

AP regional photo editor Tom Stathis said he took extensive steps to confirm the one-eyed cat was not a hoax. Stathis had Allen ship him the memory card that was in her camera. On the card were a number of pictures — including holiday snapshots, and four pictures of a one-eyed kitten. The kitten pictures showed the animal from different perspectives.

Fabricating those images in sequence and in the camera's original picture format, from the varying perspectives, would have been virtually impossible, Stathis said.

Meanwhile, Cy the one-eyed cat may be dead, but it has not left the building.

Allen said she's keeping the cat's corpse in her freezer for now, in case scientists would like it for research.

She said one thing's for certain: "I'm not going to put it on eBay."