Rocky Mountain skunk cabbages are said to contain a toxin that, when ingested by a ewe during a critical phase of her pregnancy, can cause a deformity in the offspring that causes it to become a cyclops.
Are these cyclopean sheep ever viable, or is this deformity associated with more profound defects? A single, centrally-located eye doesn’t seem like it would be a severe enough encumbrance to have a significant impact on a sheep’s ability to survive.
What would happen to the offspring if a pregnant human were to consume this particular variety of cabbage?
Most of what I found said the lambs are unviable because related deformities to the cyclops eye keep them from breathing. I was still able to find one photo of what appeard to be a live lamb so it may depend on the severity. http://www.sammybe.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_sammybe_archive.html Scroll about halfway down.
Similar deformities can happen in humans but I was not able to find if the alkaloid in skunkweed caused them. Again viability depends on how severe the deformity is.
This is the first I’ve heard of cyclopean sheep, so I’m hardly an expert, but I suspect the chemical in question screws up some physical process during fetal development, like intracellular signaling or something. I’d be surprised if it actually rearranged the fetus’s DNA into a cyclops configuration.
And, of course, if the DNA is not, in fact, being altered, the train would not be passed on to the next generation.
Any wolf that tried to eat it would run up to it, then stop and stair at the single eye for a few moments, before getting all wierded out and wandering away
