THE ZOOPHYTE AND THE BOUNDARY OF WONDER AT THE RENAISSANCE THE STRANGE CASE OF THE CONCHA ANATIFERA

The strange beings known as zoophyta, half animal, half vegetal, have cap-tivated naturalists from Antiquity onward. They have seen these hybrids as missing links exemplifying the uninterrupted continuity of the chain of living beings. However, the case of the so-called concha anatifera, Scottish shells supposedly engendered from putrefying wood or fir-tree before maturing into birds (barnacle-goose), pushed Renaissance natu-ralist knowledge to its limits. Scholars of the time have debated its likelihood by reviewing ancient theories of spontaneous generation and looking at actual specimens kept as won-ders of nature in European Wunderkammers and more directly accessible to them than the supposed phenomenon occurring in Northern regions. Called into question, the won-der ultimately flied away to reach China and survived this critical scrutiny.