Jokes of Nature
Our friends at? the Museum of Hoaxes explain the history of Lusi Naturae, or “Jokes of Nature”:
The term? Lusus Naturae described any creature or specimen that defied classification. One famous example was the Scythian Lamb, or Vegetable Lamb (see The Travels of Sir John Mandeville). This bizarre creature was part plant and part animal. It consisted of a lamb from whose belly grew a thick stem that was firmly rooted in the ground. Thus rendered immobile, the creature survived by eating the grass which grew around it. Medieval naturalists labelled the creature a lusus naturae because it defied classification, being neither plant nor animal.
The category of Lusus Naturae was not simply a way for medieval naturalists to avoid classifying puzzling creatures. It actually symbolized a belief that Nature was an active, sentient force that enjoyed playing jokes on man, that enjoyed confounding his expectations and subverting his classification schemes. In other words, medieval naturalists believed that Nature was the greatest hoaxer of all.
The category of Lusus Naturae included inanimate as well as animate objects. The naturalist Athanasius Kircher kept a collection of objects in which he had discovered the shapes of crosses. He believed that Nature had purposefully placed the crosses in the objects as a kind of game, intending for him to find them. The seventeenth century Veronese collector Lodovico Moscardo greatly prized a stone in which he discerned the shapes of trees, houses, and countrysides. He thought it was an example of Nature parodying human art by creating an image in a stone similar to something a man might draw.
Such Lusi Naturae still command attention in some quarters. Effigies of the Virgin Mary regularly turn up in grilled cheese sandwiches. The Black Table provides an instructional manual for creating your own personal “Jesus Toast.”
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