Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.

Can you grow a bonsai kitten? Should you stock up on dehydrated water? Is it easy to order human-flavored tofu? Or is this all just B.S.?

In a world of lip synching, breast implants, payola punditry, and staged reality shows, it's hard to know the real from the fake. Hippo Eats Dwarf is the essential field guide to today's Misinformation Age. Whether you're deciphering political doublespeak or trying to decide whether to forward that virus warning, hoaxpert Alex Boese provides the guidelines you need. For instance, Reality Rule 6.1: Just because you read it on the Internet doesn't make it true.

With case files, reality checks, definitions, and plenty of doctored photos, Hippo Eats Dwarf is an entertaining guide to life, death, eBay, and everything in between.

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A tongue-in-cheek field guide to the modern world's "Misinformation Age" exposes a wide range of hoaxes, from political doublespeak and virulent virus warnings to staged reality television and bonsai kittens, in a lighthearted guide that shares guidelines on how to spot a hoax. By the author of The Museum of Hoaxes. Original. 30,000 first printing.

BIRTH 1
 
Two thousand years ago, scholars recorded stories about women who had given birth to elephants and mothers who had borne over thirty children (none of whom were elephants, thankfully). We may think we’re too sophisticated to believe such tales today, but that’s not so. Instead of elephant­-­bearing women, modern legends have progressed to human clones, pregnant men, and online supermodel egg ­auctions.
 
Reality Rule ­1.1
 
Just because a woman looks pregnant, it doesn’t mean she ­is.
 
Foam­-­Pad Pregnancy, n.: What you get when a woman stuffs some padding under her shirt and claims to be pregnant. More generically, any fake ­pregnancy.
 
The Fake Pregnancy ­Scam
 
           You meet a pregnant woman—one who not only looks pregnant, but also says she is. How do you know she really is pregnant? The odds that she’s faking it aren’t very high. Unlike fake tattoos, fake tans, and fake hair, the fake pregnant look is a fashion that’s never caught on. When fake pregnancies happen, the motivation is usually fraud, not ­fashion.
 
           The scam goes like this: a woman claims to be pregnant, then persuades an adopting couple to support her while they wait to become the proud parents of her nonexistent child. By the time the couple figures out what’s going on, the con artist is long gone, looking for the next pair of ­suckers.
 
           For instance, in early 2004, authorities charged Maya­-­Anne Mays with deceiving at least three couples who hoped to adopt her child. Maya­-­Anne wasn’t pregnant, but her heavyset build made her look like she was, and a recent miscarriage allowed her to test positive on a pregnancy exam. The couples who were paying her rent (and food, and travel money) only grew suspicious when, as the months rolled by, Maya­-­Anne stubbornly declined all medical care. In hindsight, her only mistake was sticking around for too ­long.
 
           If you think a woman’s growing belly owes more to foam padding than to a fetus, what can you do to verify your suspicions? Not much. That’s the beauty of the scam. Start poking her stomach, and you open yourself up to charges of assault and battery. Ask that she subject herself to a medical examination, and she’s well within her rights to refuse. The most reliable fake­-­pregnancy­-­debunking method is to wait nine months. If no baby appears, then you might consider your suspicions ­confirmed.
 
case file: Erin ­McGaw
 
           Although most fake pregnancies are pulled off by con artists, occasionally you come across a “fake pregnancy as fashion choice” or “fake pregnancy as research project.” Take the case of Erin ­McGaw.
 
           Erin’s classmates at Penn Manor High could scarcely believe this wholesome seventeen­-­year­-­old was pregnant. She was the kind of girl who hung out after school with her church group, not with boys. But the evidence of her growing belly was undeniable. And anyway, she said she was ­pregnant.
 
           But Erin wasn’t. Early in fall 2003 she had hatched a plan to fake a pregnancy as a way of completing a senior­-­year independent study project on child development. (Why didn’t I think of that? It would have beat my senior­-­year study of nineteenth­-­century Romantic poetry hands down.) She imagined experiencing how pregnant teenagers are treated in our society and then reported her findings at the school’s year­-­end Festival of Learning. Her teacher, Mindy Rottmund, approved the project and promised to keep it a ­secret.
 
           Each week Erin carefully stuffed a little more padding into the swimsuit she wore beneath her clothes. Pretty soon boys were commenting that she looked fat and girls were whispering behind her back that she must have had a one­-­night stand. Erin found herself shunned by her peers, but she soldiered on, determined to complete her project. Even when her priest voiced concerns to her family, she didn’t give ­up.
 
           Erin could probably have gone for nine months without anyone realizing what was up, but after three months Ms. Rottmund squealed to the head­master, who immediately called a halt to the whole thing and forced Erin to confess to her ­classmates.
 
           That should have been the end of it, but one year later Erin’s fake pregnancy bore fruit of a different kind. A camera crew from MTV rolled into town and asked the entire high school to reenact what had happened so MTV could film it for High School Stories: Scandals, Pranks & Controversies. Erin didn’t reprise her role, though she did appear as an extra. Nevertheless, the school got to witness the surreal spectacle of a girl pretending to be pretending to be pregnant, while everyone around her pretended that they didn’t know she was ­pretending.
 
           Given all the pretending going on at Penn Manor High, it’s not surprising that a cynical and ugly rumor soon spread claiming it was all a hoax within a hoax—that Erin had actually been pregnant all along and had only pretended to be pretending as a way to explain away her condition and its sudden conclusion. There is absolutely no evidence to support this ­rumor.
 
Empathy Belly, n.: A strap­-­on belly manufactured by Birthways, Inc. The device simulates pregnancy so that anyone (but particularly fathers­-­to­-­be) can experience all the wonder and joy of the symptoms expectant mothers feel, including weight gain, shortness of breath, bladder pressure, backaches, fatigue, and, as the manufacturer promises, “much, much ­more!”
 
 
 
Reality Rule ­1.2
 
Human women give birth to human ­babies.
 
Pull a Mary Toft, v.: To pretend to give birth to a nonhuman species. The phrase derives from the case of the eighteenth­-­century Englishwoman who claimed to have given birth to eighteen rabbits. It was only when a doctor announced his desire to operate on her to examine her astounding uterus that Mary Toft admitted she was ­lying.
 
case file: The Woman Who Gave Birth to a ­Frog
 
           Imagine you’re a news editor at the prestigious British Broadcasting Corporation and across your desk comes a story about a woman in Iran who has given birth to a frog. Details are sketchy, but an Iranian newspaper has theorized that the woman picked up a frog larva while swimming in a dirty pool, and that the larva then grew into an adult frog inside her body. What do you do with this story? Do you (a) leave it to the likes of Ananova or the Weekly World News, noting to yourself not only the possibility that the woman is “pulling a Mary Toft,” but also

Recognized as a hoaxpert by CNN and the New York Times, among others, ALEX BOESE holds a master's degree in the history of science from the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Museum of Hoaxes and the creator and curator of www.museumofhoaxes.com. He lives in San Diego.

Hoaxes are but one tile in the vast mosaic of mis- and disinformation detailed in this delicious compendium of fakery. The ones that Boese offers are a far cry from the classic deceptions spotlighted in his previous The Museum of Hoaxes ; they're mainly smirky Internet pranks, like a fake CNN.com news report that fellatio protects against breast cancer. But Boese finds inexhaustible fodder for his theme of the ubiquitous fakery of modern life, including Enron-style business scams, lip-synching scandals, artificial flavors, mislabeled meats, doctored photos, covert marketing campaigns, celebrity plastic surgery and denials of surgery, breast implants, and that oldest of ruses, the fake orgasm. He also covers a smattering of conspiracy theories--from perennials like subliminal advertising and the "Paul is dead" rumor, to a recent Sudanese panic he dubs the "penis-melting Zionist robot comb"--proving that we are at our most gullible when we are most suspicious. Boese wittily tracks down the leads to establish the truth or--usually--falsehood behind the facade, and sprinkles in handy "Reality Rules" to bolster readers' defenses against nonsense, the most pertinent of which is, "[j]ust because you read it on the Internet doesn't mean it's true." Photos. (Apr.)

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