In the Lake Chad region of French Equatorial Africa, a curious native custom has long puzzled anthropologists. Versed as they are in the world's habits from necking to nose-rubbing, the scholars have yet to figure out why the native women pierce their lips at girlhood, then put increasingly bigger straw and wood plugs in the holes to stretch their lips until they protrude like duck bills.
Some observers claim that the disfigurement grew out of a perverse sense of beauty. Others offered an ingenious reverse explanation: originally, the duckbilled women had merely tried to make themselves unattractive to marauding Arab slave raiders...
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