When it comes to magical powers, one horn is better than two, which is why news about unicorns and one-horned animals of any kind gets a lot of attention. This week, a farmer in Brazil shows off his one-horned bull while a story about the Korean unicorn pops up again.
The bullicorn is named Diamond, which is more than we know about his owner. The photographs of Diamond show just one big horn growing right smack in the middle of his head just like a mythical unicorn. There’s no information on whether the horn is natural, whether Diamond’s owner is a virgin (real unicorns can only be captured by a virgin) or if Diamond has any magical powers, but he definitely should win the blue ribbon at the state fair for best bullicorn.
All stories of one-horned cattle eventually lead to Dr. W. Franklin Dove, a biologist at the University of Maine who created a one-horned bull in 1933 by removing a day-old calf’s horn tissue and transplanting it in the center of its head. The experiment worked – the bull grew one single horn and developed the somewhat magical power of being able to pass easily under fences without getting it caught. The bull lived for three years and Dr. Dove apparently had no other similar successes with uni-horn development.
Meanwhile, a story popped up this week that may be just a rehash of one from 2012 concerning the “recently reconfirmed” discovery of the alleged burial site of a unicorn owned and ridden by King Dongmyeong of Goguryeo, who ruled the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea from 37 BCE to 19 BCE. The site is a cave near Pyongyang with a rock engraved with the words “Unicorn Lair.” It was “recently reconfirmed” because Kiringul or “Kirin’s Grotto” had been known before as the home of Kirin, the Korean version of the Japanese unicorn also called the Kirin, which is a variation on the Chinese one-horned (sometimes two) hybrid creature (body of a deer, head of a lion, tail of an ox) called the Qilin.
Confused yet? These stories prove once again that many people are never too old to hope there really is (or was) a unicorn.
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