Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer
Encyclopedia
Discover (magazine)
Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...
magazine as an April Fool's Day joke.
A short article on the Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer first appeared in the April, 1995 issue of Discover
Discover (magazine)
Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...
magazine. The article was written by Tim Folger
Tim Folger
Tim Folger is an American science and nature writer. He is a contributing editor at Discover Magazine and writes about science for several other magazine. Folger has been the 'series editor' of The Best American Science and Nature Writing yearly anthology since 2002. He won the 2007 American...
, then an editor at the magazine. Folger wrote several other April Fool stories for the magazine, including one about the discovery of prehistoric musical instruments—bagpipes, a mastodon-tusk tuba, and a bone triangle—supposedly used by Neanderthals.
Hoax
The article carried a purported photo of a sealPinniped
Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semiaquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae , Otariidae , and Phocidae .-Overview: Pinnipeds are typically sleek-bodied and barrel-shaped...
-like creature with a bony growth protruding from its head. A deputy art director created the "bony growth" by manipulating an image of a trilobite
Trilobite
Trilobites are a well-known fossil group of extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period , and they flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before...
. According to the article, this animal had recently been discovered in Antarctica. The bony structure was suffused with tiny blood vessel
Blood vessel
The blood vessels are the part of the circulatory system that transports blood throughout the body. There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and...
s that would heat it to a temperature high enough to melt through the ice. To acquire food, a group of these animals would burrow into the ice underneath suitable prey, and use their heads to melt through. When the animal, usually a penguin
Penguin
Penguins are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers...
, sank helplessly into the water, the group of Borers would devour it. It was even speculated in the article that Antarctic explorer "Philippe Poisson" (poisson d'avril, "April fish," is the French equivalent of "April fool") may have been eaten by a group of these animals when he disappeared in 1837.
A clue that indicated that the Ice Borer story was a hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
can be found in the name of the biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
who discovered the animal, "Aprile Pazzo" ("April Fool" in Italian). Secondly, for those familiar with the creature, the picture to the right is clearly a manipulated image of a Naked Mole Rat
Naked Mole Rat
The naked mole rat , also known as the sand puppy or desert mole rat, is a burrowing rodent native to parts of East Africa and the only species currently classified in the genus Heterocephalus...
, a curious burrowing rodent from Africa.
Influence
Discover magazine received more mail about this article than about any other article it had ever published. A number of zoo officials and scientists called the magazine asking how they could acquire specimens of the creature. Ripley's Believe It or Not!Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a franchise, founded by Robert Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims...
picked up the story and ran it as a real news item. The story was repeated as true in the book "The Unofficial X-Files Companion" (page 38-39) by N.E.Genge, [Macmillan 1996].