Woman who 'gave birth' to lizard accused of witchcraft

Oenuntono, Indonesia: A woman who 'gave birth' to a lizard has been threatened by an angry lynch mob who accused her of witchcraft.

Debi Nubatonis, 31, gave birth to the gecko after an eight-month pregnancy and now Indonesian officials are sending in an exert team to clear up the mystery.

The scientists in the team said that although it was clearly nonsense that the woman had given birth to a lizard, they needed to investigate to come up with a logical explanation.

The alleged lizard birth happened in May in the remote Oenunto Village where a midwife who claimed she went to deliver a baby for a woman who did not have time to get to the hospital alleged that instead of a child, a lizard had been born.

The allegations led to threats against the woman and her family who were accused of witchcraft and that quickly led to hysterical debate on the internet.

But now the Chief Medical Officer of nearby Kupang City, Dr Messe Ataupa, said that a team has been sent in to investigate and clear it up. Although they have yet to present their final report, the team have begun to explore some possibilities.

Ataupa said: "It is clearly a nonsense to suggest that the woman gave birth to a lizard. There has never been a proven case of a living organism from one species giving birth to a different species, it just doesn't happen.

"We have spoken to locals who confirmed that the woman showed all the symptoms of pregnancy, and it does seem according to the midwife that she appeared to be going into labour. However we believe it was just a phantom pregnancy or pseudocyesis where there was never a child although the woman would have had many of the symptoms."

He said that a small percentage of women who had phantom pregnancies also experienced labour and it was possible that there might have been some discharge which if it had landed on the lizard might have led to the confusion and the belief from the midwife that the woman had given birth to a gecko.

He said: "If there was no baby, it might be possible that she just jumped to the wrong conclusion."

The midwife Josephine Lydia Hellen Wadu was the one who started the latest alert when she insisted on taking the lizard to the Oenuntono Health Centre and filed a report to claim it had been born from the young woman.