At times, evolution takes a wrong turn. When it does, all we can do is stare in fascination at what it produces for us. Sometimes, it gives us something wonderful like the octopus. Other times, we get something terrible like the bobbit worm.

But every now and then, we get an animal that’s just so poorly thought out that it makes us wonder if evolution itself might have been drunk during the design phase. These animals have no right to exist in the state they do. Yet they continue on, not knowing that their bodies, brains, or both are ridiculous.

10 Horse

When we think about horse attributes, one of the first things that comes to mind is speed. Horses are built for it, bred for it, and even used as a measurement of how fast and powerful a car is. We as a species chose, bonded with, and selectively bred these animals to be fast and strong. So you would think that they would be physically well suited to running, jumping, and pulling.

Unfortunately for the horse, they got the short straw when it comes to their physicality. Horses can reach speeds of up to 80–89 kilometers per hour (50–55 mph), roughly twice the top speed of a human being. But it comes at a cost: A horse that runs at that speed for more than a few minutes experiences bleeding in its lungs and throat.^[1]

Their bodies are built for speed and power, and yet they are incredibly fragile. When horses exercise too hard or for too long, they develop an “exercise intolerance” that causes their very breath to hurt them. The pressure on their lungs from gasping for air while running breaks blood vessels and causes them to cough up blood.

Once it starts, the only fix for this problem is to stop them from running.

9 Koala

Herbivores are a special class of animal. To eat nothing but vegetation that wears down the teeth, they have to have special adaptations. Some—like rats, hamsters, and other such rodents—have teeth that just grow forever. Others, like the horse, have incredibly tall teeth that take years to wear down.

On the other hand, koalas . . . have nothing. In addition to having small, smooth brains (which rob them of the ability to accomplish complex tasks) and being incredibly picky eaters who only consume poison (the toxic and extremely low-nutrient leaves of the eucalyptus plant), koalas have a single, rooted set of small, jagged teeth.

Over time, the tough, fibrous leaves of the eucalyptus plants wear down those teeth—all the way to the gumline. Unable to eat the leaves and unwilling to consume anything else, the koala starves to death.^[2]

8 Sunfish

The ocean sunfish (aka mola) is one of those rare animals that serves no purpose on this Earth. They are strange-looking with their large eyes and lips and their inability to close their mouths due to their strange teeth.

In addition, they are exceptionally vulnerable to parasites and predators. Not that they have many, of course. The 4.3-meter (14 ft), 2,300-kilogram (5,000 lb) fish exists on a diet of algae, plankton, and jellyfish. All these foods are low in nutrition, which makes them the fish equivalent of lettuce.

This unfortunate creature also lacks a swim bladder, an important organ that nearly all fish possess to help them float. The sunfish has to compensate for this missing organ with every inch of its body, specifically with a layer of jelly under its skin that makes it neutrally buoyant.

In fact, the only reason the sunfish continues to exist is because it lays up to 300 million eggs at a time. This would be impressive except that their strategy is to dump all 300 million into the water near a male and hope that the eggs are fertilized and survive to hatch.^[3]

7 Cheetah

The cheetah is one of our favorite predators. We imagine them snarling and pouncing on prey as they roam the African plains. We see them as powerful, speedy hunters that are always ready to take on a challenge.

Even though we love them, we are a little afraid of cheetahs because we equate them to lions. With the cheetahs’ sharp claws, sharp teeth, and incredible speed, you’d assume that they are fearless hunters that could stare death in the eye and chirp before swallowing a village whole.

Fortunately for us, we don’t have to worry too much about them because cheetahs are known for another trait as well: severe anxiety. Especially in captivity, cheetahs are so horribly stressed out just by existing that they have trouble socializing and breeding. It’s gotten to the point that zoos around the world have started giving cheetahs their own support dogs to help them stay calm enough to breed and socialize.^[4]

Luckily for the cheetahs, the dogs are happy to be their support buddies and neither seems to be a threat to the other.

6 Sea Snakes

Water all around and not a drop to drink!

Sea snakes are exactly what their name suggests: snakes that live in the sea. These odd little creatures swim on top of the waves. They slither across the ocean as if it were sand, eat fish, and have babies. Given that they live in salt water, you’d think they could drink it.

Nope. In fact, sea snakes are almost always in a state of moderate dehydration. They can’t drink salt water at all and have to wait for it to rain. When it rains on the ocean, the less dense fresh water sits on top, floating over the more dense salt water of the sea.^[5]

When this happens, the snakes are free to drink as much as they can. However, as rains happen infrequently out there on the waves, the poor snakes spend much of their time thirsty to the point of dehydration.

They also can’t go on land and either can’t or won’t swim into freshwater streams and rivers.

5 Giant Squid

The giant squid is one of the only true sea monsters in the ocean. With eyes the size of basketballs and top speeds of up to 32 kilometers per hour (20 mph), the giant squid is massive, fast, and terrifying to encounter. It eats up to 227 kilograms (500 lb) of food a day in the form of fish, sharks, and even smaller squid.

Don’t think for a second that it’s all good for this huge cephalopod. This creature also has a fatal design flaw: Its throat runs directly through its own brain. Should this massive tentacled beast eat something too big, swallowing the prey will give the giant squid brain damage as the bulge passes through the brain and presses hard against the tissues. The big gulp will bruise and possibly mash the ring of brain pressed against the esophagus.^[6]

For this animal, biting off more than you can handle can be a death sentence.

4 Kakapo Bird

Imagine for a minute that you could only hook up with someone based on how many berries were ripe on the bushes around your house. Not only that, but there was a very low chance of anything actually coming of it even if the berries were plentiful. That’s life as a kakapo parrot, the world’s only flightless parrot and resident idiot bird of New Zealand.

Considered a sacred bird by local Maori populations, the kakapo is an absolute mystery of evolution. Flightless, nocturnal, and with massive thighs for climbing trees, these birds have no defense against predators such as weasels, cats, and feral dogs. But the real kicker is their mating habits.

Once every two or three years (and sometimes as long as five years), a certain berry (the rimu fruit) comes into bloom on the islands where these birds live. Only during a good blooming season for these fruits will the kakapo mate.

The males build large, acoustic bowls and make loud, booming “BOW” noises to attract a female. But if he isn’t loud enough or if insufficient rimu fruit is in bloom, the females will ignore him. Their infertility rates are so high that this only hurts them. As of now, there are just over 150 wild kakapo.^[7]

3 Great White Sharks

Nothing captures the imagination of ocean lovers quite like the great white shark. With its huge jaws, rows upon rows of teeth, and powerful musculature, the shark has been a staple of many horror and action films and stories through the decades. It is also a well-known fact that sharks have to keep moving to breathe.

What you may not have known, however, is that this applies even when the great white is sleeping. Thanks to being obligate ram ventilators, great white sharks have to keep water moving through and over their gills at all times.

To make up for this, they have a unique way of sleeping. They lie in a current with their mouths open, sleeping while the current pushes through their gills and breathes for them.^[8] That’s like if you had to go on a ventilator every time you needed a nap.

2 Whales

In general, it’s an accepted fact that life started in the sea. Creatures were born, evolved, crawled up on land, and became mammals. Although these critters may have liked being mammals, some of them missed the ocean. Enter: the whale.

The oldest-known ancestor of the whale is the Indohyus, a creature that looked a bit like a spotted anteater. Along the way, this animal returned to the water, evolving new and interesting aquatic traits.^[9]

However, it did not shed its mammalian characteristics. The new fishlike creature, which would eventually become the whale and the dolphin, still needed to breathe air and have lungs instead of gills, both terrible traits to have when you live like a fish.

1 Humans

Ah, humanity. We’re pretty proud of ourselves as a species. Speaking intellectually, we’re fairly solid. Our brains aren’t perfect, but we’re intelligent. After all, we’ve managed to build computers and spacefaring vessels. Our physical form, however, is not good.

For one thing, our feet are made of 26 separate bones—a leftover from our primate days. This makes our feet incredibly fragile and unnervingly easy to damage as they were originally meant for gripping and had the help of our hands in supporting our weight.

Our ankles are also fragile and turn outward at the slightest provocation—to the point that even stepping wrong can sprain or break them. Likewise, our spines are not built for the burden they carry. A myriad of curves and strange proportions lead to back problems as early as our twenties and almost inevitably by our forties or fifties.

We also have the misfortune of giving birth to live young whose heads and torsos are larger than our birth canals are normally equipped to handle and twice as big by proportion as most other animal young. Nearly a full third of human births are now performed via C-sections.^[10]

Deana lives with her girlfriend and a roommate in Small Town, USA. She one day hopes to own a big enough tank for 20 goldfish. Her favorite soup is cream of mushroom.

Time. Time is money they say. Time is also freedom. We each have the same amount of time every day – 24 hours – to do everything we need to do to: to work, to eat, to rest, to sleep, to have fun, to relax, and often to try to suit everyone. Some of us seem to have all work and no play, and what free time we have is never free, it is lost to endless hassle and mindless tedium’s. So why not take time into your own hands by making it work for you for a change?

The laundry – everybody loves it! So lets start with this first. Pre-sorting the laundry can save a lot of time and mistakes. One red sock in a whites wash can throw away all your hard work; so as soon as it’s dirty – sort it. If you have enough space in your kitchen or laundry room, consider having four wash baskets/tubes (i.e. one for the whites, the coloreds, the woolens, and one for the delicates), then you can choose which basket is the most important and bung your materials straight into the washer. When they come out at the other end, nice and clean, hang them on the line or on a drying rack straight away. By hanging clothing to dry it can save a lot of time ironing and pressing them flat; and some items will naturally dry without creases if hung to dry.

Whenever kitchen and meal utensils are being used, it can be a good idea to have a bowl or hot water handy to slip your items into. Doing so can mean you can easily wash and rinse items while preparing food. At the end of the day, take out all the items you have accumulated in the washing bowl, and fill it again with hot water. Stubborn items can now be washed in a fraction of the time as most of the gunk will have softened or come off in the pre-soak. This tip is especially useful for pans, but just about anything will benefit from a pre-soak. It can also save water; as a pre-soaking will still be effective even if the water is cold and filthy, and most loads only require one bowl of hot water to finish the whole job. One word of warning though; don’t be tempted to leave the dishes for the next day – not only because it is so easy to put things off, but also because doing so can permanently stain the washing bowl; wasting time as you go out and buy a new one.

Now this may seem an obvious choice, but in practice this method can waste a lot of time for most people. In theory, working from home can mean all the time you would usually waste traveling to and from work can be saved – and spent doing more important things. In practice, those more ‘important’ things can quickly turn into house-work, web browsing, washing the car, scrubbing the toilet bowl – anything that doesn’t involve sitting down to work! Another disadvantage comes as an offshoot to this, as sometimes the person feels so guilty that they will work long into the evening to ‘catch up’. This then bites into personal time; the person goes to bed later; the person gets up later the next day; the cycle begins again.

If you travel to work on a train or a bus, the chances are that you could use this time to get some jobs done quickly en-route. Sending those all important emails can be done even before you set a foot inside work. Typing up a memo, working on a presentation, or simply writing up a ‘to do’ list (see #2) can shave those valuable little jobs off your agenda. Laptops can come in handy at school too; by typing things directly into a digital format, whole chunks of notes and thoughts can be dragged and dropped into your latest essay. Finally, with email taking the crown away from the postal service and the telephone as the most used communications medium, vital messages and files can be processed and analyzed on-the-hop; saving the sender and the receiver lots of ‘waiting’ time.

Not all of us work at the same time. Some jobs require working very late hours, or perhaps working through to the next day. In these cases, it can become a chore to do more work in the kitchen when you get home – when all you want to do is collapse. To save time, I used to do all my cooking all on the same day, and freeze the results. If cooking isn’t really your thing and you want to give this a try, I recommend creating at least four dishes: I.e., creamy pasta and tuna, chili, broth, a chicken dinner. Throw one of these together with potatoes and a choice of vegetables and you have a meal – to be stored on a reusable foil dish – and frozen. Then, instead of eating junk after work, you can simply pop one of your four choices of meal into the oven for half an hour instead. One roast chicken can be portioned out to be included in 10 meals. Sunday lunches and full English breakfasts can be pre-cooked in the same way. My personal record was 35 meals cooked and frozen in one day – and a whole months worth of making sure I ate properly after work.

For those people not enthused about grocery shopping, the obvious solution would be to buy all you need in one go. Can you buy everything you need for a month in just one day? Yes, particularly if you have a large freezer, a large trunk, and a small family. Buying in bulk can also be cheaper as larger packs and multi-packs can be much cheaper than buying individual items. Why buy one bar of soap when four can be bought together, more cheaply, and more time efficiently? Washing detergent is something we all need regularly and in good supply – so if you work out that you will get through four boxes over a year, save time by buying all four together – you will have to buy them all eventually! Another tip might be to shop online. This saves traveling time, buying time, and queuing time in a store. However for grocery buying, this tip only really works if you are entirely familiar with your grocery list AND the online stores’ layout; otherwise it can take just as long as shopping the traditional way.

When you get your groceries home, put as many things into long term storage as possible. Cans of food will last longer than a month. Dry goods and chemicals will last longer. Frozen goods can go in the freezer, and a lot of fresh goods can be frozen too. This all adds to the duration between trips to the store. If you are trying out tip # 10, and wonder how you can make perishables last longer – try freezing. Bread, for example, freezes well; particularly if you separate the slices before freezing, or by placing 4-8 slices in a sandwich bag together. Then you will always have bread – and a quick trip to the toaster defrosts every time. Milk can be frozen as well, and works especially well if you have a big ‘chest’ freezer to stand them up in. The note here is that due to the freezing process, whole milk will come out tasting like semi skimmed. Semi skimmed will come out tasting like skimmed, but by doing so, your milk will last for months at a time. Place your milk in the fridge to defrost the day before you need it. What else freezes? Some vegetables freeze well as most vegetables are water-based anyway. Eggs? If you hard boil an egg it works – though I haven’t tried from raw yet. Pies, pastry, cakes? No problem!

Most people have seen the old type office filing system – loads of cardboard wallets filled with papers, and marked with clip-on labels above each wallet. Accessing files is a matter of opening the drawer, finding the label and opening the wallet/file. To do this in the home saves an almost immeasurable portion of your valuable time, as all the things you may need to refer back to are all indexed and stored in ONE place. Each time a new bill comes in, pay it, and throw it into the correct file. Then, if you need to refer back (for your electricity company, or your phone company) all you need to do is open one drawer and pull the latest bill out. Banking problems? By placing all the bank statements in the ‘bank’ wallet, they will naturally fall into date order as this is how you placed them in. It then becomes a breeze to check back and find things. Anything from receipts, manuals, brochures, business cards, scraps of paper with phone numbers on them – all the things so easily lost around the house – can be on-hand when you need them. Also, part of the home filing system (which takes a day to set up), is having all your phone numbers listed on a single sheet of paper. If ever your home phone gets broken, or mobile goes missing, or you loose your address book, at least you have a backup. This is also great for emergency numbers; which are also all together and available on demand. In general, the better you can organize your home, the easier it is going to be to find things. In an emergency, knowing where you keep a torch, an extinguisher, your wallet, and the house and car keys, may save your life one day….

With the development and rise of the internet over the last 15 years, communications have moved on. Now it is possible to do nearly all your banking quickly and easily from home – saving the time it would normally take queuing up and waiting at a bank. Money transfers, bill payments, transaction accounts, overdrafts and applications are now available on most online banking sites, enabling you to use and distribute money on the same computer as you may use to budget, receive bills though email, or use for any number of other money related tasks. If you have several accounts with the same bank, online banking comes into its own; from being able to instantly check your balances, to transferring money over to other accounts if they look like they might go into the red.

Even though a modern PC is still not too great at multi-tasking, we as human beings have been doing so for millennia. If you can, arrange items on your ‘to do’ list (item #2) that can be done together at the same time. For example, printing pages while typing, burning discs or backing up while working, planning while eating. There may be any number of opportunities to multitask on a daily basis, and the most common way to achieve this is simply to have all your applications and files loaded into the computer at the same time. Then if you need to switch to a different priority, one click of the mouse (or an Alt.Tab) will get you there. It is useful to always have your email accessible at all times; perhaps having your mailbox as a tab in Firefox, already pre-loaded and ready to go. Another good example of multitasking may be to get everyone you need to see to come and see you, perhaps all together in one go. So, if you wish to see all your friends – why not invite them all over to one single venue. Christmas can also be a good time to get everyone together rather than to go off and visit people individually.

Perhaps the best example of multitasking is to delegate – i.e. to arrange for another person to do a task instead of you, or on your behalf, while you do something else. Then the whole job gets done more quickly, and hopefully just as completely as if you’d done it all yourself. An example of delegation would be to get your own family involved in the tasks you do: why not rope the kids in to help with household chores, ask others to pick the kids up from school, ask others to pick up groceries, or even ask others to grab you a coffee. Delegation can also be great for ‘getting someone else to pass a message on’, but be warned in this case that an exact message may become corrupted, a bit like Chinese whispers. Also be careful not to delegate tasks which you need to make sure get done on time, as if they don’t, it’s still your fault.

The larger tasks of the day are the ones which give the biggest headaches, and also offer the richest personal rewards. Some tasks can be split and delegated, but some need to be split in order for them to look smaller on the page. Self motivation is always the key when it comes to time management, and so it becomes much easier on the individual to move though a list of smaller tasks than to face the mountain of one large one. For example, if the task was to deliver a product from point A to point B, the task could be so much easier to work through if you split it down into ‘phone calls’, ‘paper work’, ‘mail deliveries’, ‘confirmation’, ‘feedback’ – rather than facing “This must be delivered today! – No Excuses!”

Another advantage of working through smaller goals, apart from the psychological and stress factors, is that there is a higher chance of getting things right first time. Life is always full of second chances, but each time you have to go back and do it again is just a waste of time. Who needs it? Never sacrifice quality for ‘due care and attention’, as poor workmanship or appliance of effort can lead to having pretty fragile offerings at the other end. Even if a long list of tasks has been broken down, it is important to get everything done, mindfully and completely, in an orderly fashion, and on the same day if possible. If things take longer than a day, don’t reply on your memory, or your motivation, to pull you through; trying to get into the mindset of the day before is harder work than just making sure things get done on the same day – first time.

‘To Do’ lists. Why bother? Why spend 10mins every day working out lists of things to do rather than just getting on and doing them? Well, the simple reason is because the human mind is not the most perfect thing ever created, and does forget things from time to time. To Do lists will not only allow you to arrange items for priority and convenience, but also allow you to pencil in all those little jobs you would normally not even think about. Telephoning ahead to make arrangements is a sensible idea, and a To Do list could remind you to do that before you remember to remind yourself – half way down the highway. Even in the home environment, remembering to contact a friend, or even to take out the trash, can be as insignificant as they are vital; and forgetting can mean waiting another day, or even another week, to catch up. If it’s worth remembering, note it. As a consequence, writing things down will also improve your memory for those everyday priorities – not only did you come up with them, you also wrote them, and perhaps read them back. Some people are so good at remembering their To Do lists that they wonder why they ever write them, not realizing the writing is the reason for the remembering! Another point is to keep things plain and simple, on one sheet of paper, or on a white board. Don’t have endless scraps of paper or Post It notes piled up on desks and stuffed in drawers. Planning ahead can also save time in all sorts of other ways. At the start of each month, write down any birthdays or special events so that you have plenty of time to organize gifts. In the case of Christmas, aim to buy at least two months before the 25th so that you have enough time to choose a thoughtful gift; last minute gifts don’t say much about the quality of your friendship. Finally, it is also a good idea to have a calendar which shows each month, or all the months, on one page. Diaries and weekly reminder books are a very poor way to plan ahead as you may not see an event coming up until it is too late to make arrangements for it.

In other words, don’t be tempted to put things off until a later time or date; for one reason, because you may forget to take it up or finish it! The other reason is because the best way to save time is to get on and do something about it. This may seem the most common sense aspect of this whole list, but really, procrastination can be a habitual bugbear for a lot of people. Going to work can be a hard task to instigate, especially if you haven’t even managed to get out of bed. Save time by not only getting up, but getting up earlier. That way you help beat the traffic, the journey takes a shorter length of time, and is generally less hassle; resulting in an easier start and a clearer head.

Doing things early is indeed the very best way to save time. This is not always possible, or appreciated, but there are a lot of advantages to getting things done early. For one thing, nothing impresses others more than hearing “already done it!”. For another, so much time is actually wasted by leaving things until the last minute and having to rush. Rushing is time wasting? Yes, because rushing often creates costly mistakes. If you know what you want to achieve, make your list, break it down, delegate, and aim to complete hard tasks first. That way the bulk of your ‘hard work’ will be over sooner, leaving the rest of the day to tidy up the loose ends. Hard jobs also get done more thoroughly in the morning when you have the motivation and the energy to do so. After lunch is the worst time to do, or start, large tasks as your bodies’ energy juices will be flowing AWAY from the brain in order to digest the food in your stomach. The last of the big jobs should be started no later than 3pm – as the body will naturally begin to wind down after this. Procrastination is as much about psychological security and job satisfaction as it is about putting things off. If you must, start by promising yourself a treat. Then get on with it. Some things are inevitable – they have to be done sooner or later, so rather sooner than later eh? Soonest fixed is soonest mended, and soonest home for tea.

Throughout history, human beings have created extremely cruel torture devices designed to cause huge pain. While some of these devices were designed to face a slow, painful death, many inflicted so much pain and left such damage that the victims died of blood-loss or infections. Many torture methods and contractions, like the head crushers, breast ripper, or crocodile shears, which were designed to deform the victim, but ended up killing the victim. But many torture devices left the victim to deal with lifelong agony and deformity. Let us take a look at Cruel Torture Devices Designed to Cause Huge Pain.

10 Most Cruel Torture Devices of All Time:

10. Scold’s Bridle

16th century Scotland and England used Scold’s Bridle on women considered as witches, shrews or scolds, particularly for public humiliation. It was an iron mask which attached to a helmet. The contraption was attached to the head of the woman, and the bridle-bit, which measured 2” long and 1” wide, and was studded with spikes, would be inserted into the mouth. This effectively stopped the person from speaking or even moving the tongue, or she would undergo cause immense pain.

9. Tongue Tearer

A Tongue Tearer looked like an extra-large pair of scissors. It was used to cut off the tongue of the victim without any effort. The mouth of the victim would first be forced open using a device called a mouth opener. After that the Tngue Tearer, made of iron, would be used to firmly clasp his tongue with the rough grippers of the device. The tongue of the person being tortured would then be twitched uncomfortably. Then, after tightening the screw, tongue would be torn out roughly.

8. Lead Sprinkler

A Lead Sprinkler was one of the cruel torture devices designed to cause huge pain. The device was usually filled with molten lead, though other liquids such as tar, boiling oil, water, etc., were also used, at high temperature, which could severely scald skin. The victim was tortured using this device by dripping the hot and burning content onto the stomach or other parts of the body, including the eyes. Even molten silver would be poured on the victim’s eyes, to produce the most fatal effects.

7. Knee Splitter

Knee Splitters were employed in the 12th century, during the Inquisition. The contraption had two wooded blocks with spikes. The number of spikes ranged from 3 to 20, and depended on the gravity of the crime committed by the person being punished. These spikes are driven into the flesh of the victim, and once the spikes are embedded into the victim’s leg, the blocks are drawn closer to each other using two large screws, to slowly pulverize the knee, just as the device’s name suggests.

6. Thumb Screws

Thumb Screws, also called Pilliwinks, were used in Medieval Europe as a cruel torture devices designed to cause huge pain. It was used to crush the thumb, fingers and toes of the victim, which were inserted into the contraption, with screws cranking down to pulverize the digits. Sometimes, the crushing bars would have spikes to intensify the pain. Weirdly, during Renaissance eras of England, these were used to straighten and elongate a woman’s fingers, to make them elegant.

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5. Heretic’s Fork/Neck Torture

Heretic’s Fork was metal device with two bi-pronged forks attached to a belt strapped round the victim’s neck, with one fork pointed to the chin, and the other to the sternum, while the victim remained suspended. The device prevented sleep, because, the prongs would pierce their throat and chest if the head dropped. The Neck Torture worked similarly, with a metal or wooden device studded with spikes around the victim’ neck preventing eating, lying down, or any other activity.

4. Scavenger’s Daughter

Queen Elizabeth I used Scavenger’s Daughter, also called Skeffington’s gyves, invented by a Brit named Skevington, against Protestants accused of treason. The apparatus had an iron hoop. The victim had to to sit on one half of it, with the other half crushing him further into an involuntary rigid crouch, as the screw would tighten the hinge in the middle. This would eventually crack the victim’s ribs and breastbone and dislocate the spine. It could even lead to bleeding from fingertips and face.

3. Rack/Horse/Strappado

The Rack, used in Europe, came in many forms, like the Horse. Basically, the victim would be tied down, as a mechanical device, tightened the rope to dislocate the joints, often long enough to tear the limbs off. In case of a Horse, the victim was to the top of a beam, i.e. Horse-back, facing up, while, pulleys below tightened the ropes. The Strappado, used in Palestine, does not have a base for the body to lie on, but the tied arms were wrenched out of the joints of the hanging prisoner.

2. Pear of Anguish

Pears of Anguish were metal tools, mainly for women. Different kinds were inserted into the vagina of a woman, or the mouth or throat of the person being tortured. Shaped like a pear, the device had four ‘leaves’ which were operated by a screw at the top. Once inserted into the orifice of a person for abortion, witchery, miscarriage, homosexuality, adultery, blasphemy, lies, etc., to spread it open, tearing the muscles, causing permanent internal damage, or to dislocate or break jawbones.

1. The Judas Cradle

Judas Cradle was torture device, not designed to kill, but to inflict pain and humiliation. With a steel collar attached to the victim’s waist, a pyramid-shaped tool would be impaled into his intently stretched orifice. The pressure caused excessive pain. The torturer could lift the victim with rope and pulley system and lower him again, driving the penetrative part deeper into the victim. Torture sessions lasted for days. Also, the device was rarely washed, causing life-threatening infections.

The physical conditions in which the victims were left from the cruel torture devices designed to cause huge pain would not only incapacitate them, but also screamed of their criminal history, almost always, even if the crimes were as trivial as petty theft, or they were not criminals, at all, and yet were punished on the basis of just accusation, or for alternate sexuality. Though not a frequent happening, death occurred, too. If that didn’t happen, the torturers and punishers made sure that these torture devices were supplemented with other forms of painful torture and humiliation.

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