The only really aberrant modifications of the wing-muscles are found in the Ratitae, where they are, however, all easily explained by reduction, and in the penguins, where the wings are greatly specialized into blades for rowing with screw-like motions.
The following species are aberrant in respect of these characters: Peripatus (Opisthopatus) cinctipes, Purcell (Cape Colony and Natal), presents a few Australasian features; there is a small receptaculum seminis on each oviduct, some of the legs are provided with welldeveloped coxal organs, the feet have one anterior, one posterior and one dorsal papilla, and the successive difference in the ages of the embryos in the uterus, though nothing like that found in the neotropical species, is slightly greater than that found in other investigated African species.
A still more aberrant gazelle is a small North-East African species known as the beira (Dorcatragus melanotis), with very short horns, large hoofs and a general appearance recalling that of some of the members of the subfamily Neotraginae, although in other respects gazelle-like.
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But it varies much in form and scaling, and some most aberrant varieties have been fixed by artificial selection, the principal being the king-carp or mirror-carp, in which the scales are enlarged and reduced in number, forming more or less regular longitudinal series on the sides, and the leather-carp, in which the scales have all but disappeared, the fish being covered with a thick, leathery skin.
Except in a few aberrant types, which are mentioned below, the mouth is surrounded by a much developed lip like a funnel directed downwards, and is armed with a horny beak not unlike that of a cuttle-fish.
The most aberrant type of larva is that of the genus Prosopistoma, which was originally described as an entomostracous crustacean on account of the presence of a large carapace overlapping the greater part of the body.
The jerboa group (Dipodidae, or Jaculidae) is also mainly an Old World type, although its aberrant representatives the jumping-mice (Zapus) have effected an entrance into Arctic North America.
All the well-known breeds of dogs are highly artificial and their maintenance requires the constant care of the breeder in mating, and in rejecting aberrant progeny.
Again, while Conjugatae may be shut out from Chlorophyceae as an independent group co-ordinate with them in rank, the Characeae constitute so aberrant a group that it has even been proposed to raise them as Charophyta to the dignity of a main division co-ordinate with Thallophyta.
The Ctenophora are so aberrant in structure that it has been proposed to separate them from the Coelentera altogether: they are, however, theoretically deducible from an ancestor common to other Coelentera, but their extreme specialization precludes the idea of any close relationship with the rest.