# Babies and Gills?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-gills/150709>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 24, 2003, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-gills/150709 "2003-01-24T21:05:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2003, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-gills/150709/21 "2003-01-27T16:11:53Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by slipster \*  
> \*\*This ran in the family of an old girlfriend of mine. Her brother and her son were both born with a barely noticeable indentation in their neck, rather like a deep pin prick. Doctors assured them this was the tip of a gill slit which failed to seal completely.  
> \*\*

Were they perhaps from Innsmouth, MA?

From H.P. Lovecraft’s _The Shadow over Innsmouth_ (1936):

> [@](#):
>
> When the driver came out of the store I looked at him more carefully and tried to determine the source of my evil impression. He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man not much under six feet tall, dressed in shabby blue civilian clothes and wearing a frayed golf cap. His age was perhaps thirty-five, but **the odd, deep creases in the sides of his neck** made him seem older when one did not study his dull, expressionless face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery-blue eyes that seemed never to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin, and singularly undeveloped ears. . . . As he walked toward the bus I observed his peculiarly shambling gait and saw that his feet were inordinately immense. The more I studied them the more I wondered how he could buy any shoes to fit them.

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2003, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-gills/150709/22 "2003-01-27T16:26:59Z")

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My sister has one of those in her neck. Just a little hole, but it goes way deep. It got infected when she was a baby, which is how it was found.

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