The showman P. T. Barnum said that a sucker is born every minute, and I certainly would have been the next one if my husband hadn't been nearly as gullible. The article on hotheads certainly had me going, though. With a little help from co-workers, we deciphered Aprile Pazzo as Italian for "April Fool" and realized that the photo illustration was doctored. The next question is: How many more of the articles were April Fools' jokes? Rats on Prozac, mini-mammoths, and buddy-system birds all now appear to stretch reality beyond belief. Please sort out the truth from fiction for us, and I'm glad this only happens once a year!

Jenny Garner
The Dalles, Oreg.



Thank you so very much for solving an unsolved mystery that has torn our family apart with grief and anger. Our Great-Great Uncle Phillipe Poisson was thought to have run off wth a tribe of naked native Antarcticans and lived with them until his death in the late 1800's. Now we can rest easier knowing he died a hero and not a cheat! It is comforting knowing that he is preserved on ice in the form of ice borer post digestion.

Since the nasty little critters at least leave their penguin victims' webbed feet, beak, and a few feathers lying there in a neat pile, perhaps Uncle Phillipe's snow shoes, false teeth, and toupee can still be recovered.


Please have Aprile Pazzo be on the look out for these frozen relics. (Perhaps you can have an article about her humanitarian find in your next APRILE issue!)

David M. Chisholm, Sr.
Houston, Texas


Dr. Aprile Pazzo is to be congratulated on her great contribution to modern science (DISCOVER, April 1995) with her new discovery of the Antarctic Ice Borers. She did a skillful job of research and is to be commended for the skill with which she has presented this to DISCOVER readers. However, in the matter of the disappearance of Phillipe Poisson, in 1837, it occurs to us that readers would like to have some more information about a scientists whose fame, in his day, lay both in his field work and his eccentric way of life.

Poisson was one of the great ichthyologists of the nineteenth century who first came to the attention of the international scientific community for his discovery of the Giant Penguins of Ton Gue Incheek Island, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. It was actually a singular part of his eccentricity that contributed to this great discovery. A gentleman of the old school, Poisson always, even whent he temperature was thirty below, dressed formally for dinner. In his camp, for dinner, white shirt, black dinner jacket and trousers with a bow tie were a must. One night, as he was sitting down to dinner, two Giant Penguins approached his tent and stood outside, watching him through the open flaps. Poisson reached for his notebook and within seconds a new species had been added to the world of science. The reason that the Giants approached him when they saw him and what Dr. Pazzo failed to mention? Poisson was not, as she states, 5 foot 6. He was 3 foot 6, a dwarf, and the Giants probably thought that he was one of them. Poisson, because of his size, suffered from an incurable shyness, which is why he spent years in the Antarctic, alone. Now, after nearly a century and a half, scientists feel that Dr. Pazzo may well be right, that it was the Ice Borers that got him in the end, particularly if they spotted him and attacked, mistaking him for a Giant, when he was dressed for dinner.

Peter C. Byrne, FRGS Executive Director
The International Wildlife Conservation Society, Inc.
Mount Hood, Oregon