[highimpact]

I lost a fingernail once, from the cuticle to the tip, and it completely regenerated itself. Does that count as a limb?

[jdm]

Hasn’t Paul McCartney had a rough enough week already?

[Revolting cat!]

Paging Heather Mills!

[A CA Guy]

Well, Obama is trying to move the foot that keeps regenerating out of his mouth.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[tflabo]

Does it grow any GOP leadership spines?

[Ignatz]

Placeholder ping

[conservative cat]

Ah, interesting news to all of us who read A Wrinkle in Time as children.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

More importantly, a very rare phenomenon has been observed over the past several hundred years, of exclusively old men, who unexpectedly shed their teeth and regrew a completely new set.

This does not seem physiologically possible, as people are born with their adult teeth in development underneath their baby teeth. A dentist I mentioned this to postulated that they lived the bulk of their lives without the loss of their baby teeth, but this sounds just as unlikely.

But imagine what could be done for people with bad teeth, if their genetic trigger could be activated so that they would grow a new set of healthy teeth.

Imagine teething at the age of 40!

[Names Ash Housewares]

My spider-sense is tingling for some reason.

Curtis Connors was born in Coral Gables, Florida. He was a gifted surgeon who enlisted in the army and was sent off to war. He performed emergency battlefield surgery on wounded GIs, but his right arm was injured in a blast and had to be amputated. After his return to civilian life as a research technologist, he became obsessed with uncovering the secrets of reptilian limb regeneration and studied reptilian biology extensively. From his home in the Florida Everglades, he finally developed an experimental serum taken from reptilian DNA. He successfully regrew the missing limb of a rabbit and then, despite the warnings of his wife Martha, chose to test it on himself. Connors ingested the formula and his missing arm did indeed grow back. The formula had a horrible side effect; Connors was subsequently transformed into a reptilian humanoid monster

[adorno]

John Bobbit is investigating this great news as we speak.

[Salamander]

I cut the end of my thumb off in 1992.

It grew back.

[but then again, I *am* a salamander]......8:)

[austinaero]

Paging Jim Bobbitt. Jim Bobbitt, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

[A_perfect_lady]

I saw a small-mouth bass regrow his tail once. It was six years ago. My (then) boyfriend, Matt, had caught the fish and was keeping it in a huge tank. It was very interactive, and would come make eye contact with us and snap at our fingers if we touched the glass.

One day we noticed Bass was getting some sort of cobwebby fungus, so Matt transferred him to a very small tank just for a few days for intensive medication. The fish would hover in his small tank and stare longingly back at the big tank.

One afternoon, Matt came home to find Bass on the floor. He'd jumped out the thin opening in the back of the tank where the florescent light had been removed. He seemed to have been trying to get back to his old tank. But he must have lain on the floor for a half hour. He was dried out, his eyes were black, his gills barely moving.

Matt scooped him up, put him back in the big tank, and started dragging him through the water, back and forth, by the mouth, like you'd do a shark to revive him. He did this for about a half hour. Finally Bass started breathing on his own, but he just sank to the floor of the tank and lay propped there like a zombie for days. His eyes were black and glassy, he didn't eat, didn't respond to anything... and his tail, which was thin, had dried out and simply fell off.

Gradually, however, Bass started to make a come back. After about a week he started swimming around again, slowly, kind of dazedly. Then he started eating again. His eyes gradually lightened to hazel again, and he became aware of us once more. And ever so slowly, his tail grew back, but much darker, almost black.

When he was completely recovered, we took him back to the lake where Matt had caught him. We sat the bucket in the water with him in it and added lake water a little at a time so the temperature change wouldn't shock him. Finally we tipped the bucket over, and Bass swam forward about three feet and stopped. Then another three feet. Then he gave a twitch of his new, dark tail, and shot off into the lake, out of sight. I hope he lived long and prospered.

[webschooner]

Paging John Bobbitt, please pick up the white courtesy phone, John Bobbitt ...

[BGHater]

Related ping.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1972048/posts

[Luigi Vasellini]

salamander bump

[libh8er]

I shaved my head one summer and in four months — voila ! I had a full of head of hair again. Hair follicles have amazing regenerative ability. One of these days I will have to cut off my head and see if I can grow a new one.

[aruanan]

What about the fifth limb?

[Titan Magroyne]

Bmfl, great thread!