Step proper up! Behold a Two-headed Snake!

Shoppers of mine who breed corn snakes lately had this very uncommon child hatch out of an egg of their incubator, a two headed snake! The hatchling seems to be a pair of conjoined twins which could be very uncommon certainly. We sometimes see two-headed snakes hatching and it’s normally a random occasion; a freak coincidence inflicting fusion throughout early embryonic growth often known as polycephaly.

In any case, most two headed snakes look to all intents and functions like a single snake physique with two heads aspect by aspect on a single neck. This hatchling nonetheless is conjoined a lot farther down the physique, simply above the extent of the center so it seems from X-rays I took that every head has a separate throat, windpipe (or trachea) and oesophagus that carries meals to the abdomen. This almost certainly resulted from fusion of monozygotic or an identical twins in the course of the early phases of growth throughout the egg. It was extraordinarily troublesome contemplating the tiny dimension of the creature to acquire good diagnostic high quality X-rays particularly because the animal was aware and troublesome to maintain it nonetheless to take a shot, so the precise anatomy continues to be unclear. I didn’t wish to danger anaesthetising such a fragile, tiny creature only for curiosity sake to take a look at its anatomy however from what I could make out it looks like there’s one dominant animal with comparatively regular anatomy and the opposite has fused simply above the extent of the center. I believe there’s a single coronary heart, abdomen and different belly organs, though there’s loads of air so there could also be two lung areas, uncommon in that snakes normally solely have a single practical lung.

Different issues which are evident are that the backbone is kinked in a couple of locations, which can trigger issues down the road, though loads of minor kinked snakes do lead completely regular and ache free lives. The excellent news is that the little snake has now eaten its first meal, and seems to be doing properly. Whether or not it survives long run continues to be unknown nonetheless. There could possibly be invisible issues we aren’t but conscious of. If it does survive it might be very attention-grabbing to carry out extra superior imaging corresponding to MRI to find out the anatomy, however in fact that is all tutorial as there can be no profit to this little snake, or ought to I say snakes! Surgical correction just isn’t potential and would end result within the demise of 1 or each animals. The principle concern within the close to future is whether or not high quality of life could be maintained.

Extra info on the underlying causes could be discovered right here:

http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask299

http://information.nationalgeographic.com/information/2002/03/0318_0319_twoheadsnake.html