The people with ‘animal powers’

Tom Leppard had spots tattooed all over his body (Ian Waldie/REX)

Few people would willingly transform their looks in such a way, and so these people gained celebrity status in their lifetime. Now, some prosthetics wearers, body hackers and amateur scientists are taking this to a different level. With technology and biology at their disposal they are aiming to mimic animal abilities – not their appearance – and they can already do things once thought impossible for humans.

Some have been augmenting their physical abilities in places we haven’t evolved to thrive, such as water. Nadya Vessey, for example, was born with a condition that prevented her legs developing properly. A few years ago, she had a mermaid tail designed that allows her to glide through the water like a dolphin.
Others are turning to technology to sense a world that lies hidden to everybody else. Take, for instance, the invisible world of electromagnetic fields. Sharks have pits in their snout called the ampullae of Lorenzini with which they can sense disturbances in the electric field caused by their prey. Birds, lobsters and bees, meanwhile, are thought to sense magnetic fields, which some use to navigate.
Sixth sense
In recent years, body modification artists have been experimenting with magnetic implants to achieve a similar “sixth sense”. By implanting tiny disc-shaped magnets in their fingers, they can feel the electromagnetic fields surrounding everyday technology. The falling price and wider availability of powerful neodymium magnets have made the procedure increasingly popular.
Peyton Rowlands is one such enthusiast, a Texas-based biohacker who implanted a magnet into the ring finger of his left hand. “You don’t feel your finger getting pulled toward anything because the magnet is just so small,” he explains. “You feel a slight buzz once you get within a couple of inches of basically anything with electricity running through it.” With the implant, Rowlands found he could detect the fields surrounding microwaves, refrigerators and power converters. “It’s a very interesting sensation, kind of crazy. One of the things that I noticed is that DC current often felt similar to a ferrous metal or another magnet, a static bubble pushing or pulling against you, as opposed to AC currents which were much more like the kind of pins and needles feeling people describe.”