"This is something I certainly wasn't expecting to get on a call," reads a Facebook post from the Nick Evans Program - Snake Rescue, an organization for the conservation of amphibians and reptiles in KwaZulu-Natal, a province of South Africa. Evans, founder of the project, was referring to a rare find: a two-headed snake discovered in Durban, the third largest city in the country.
According to him, two-headed snakes (called bicephalous) hatch both in captivity and in the wild, but this is very rare. "It's a deformity," explained the specialist.
According to the Galileo magazine, bicephaly occurs when monozygotic twins do not separate during the embryonic development phase and, thus, end up fused into a single body.
Belonging to the subspecies Dasypeltis inornata, the snake found is about 30 cm long, which suggests that it is young, since adults of this variety usually reach 75 cm. According to Evans' post, the species has nocturnal habits and is not considered venomous.
o two headed snakes loove and feed
The survival rate of animals born with such an anomaly is not known for sure, but it should not be very high. “If they hatched months or weeks ago and survived for so long, I would be really surprised”, said the researcher, informing that the rare condition poses difficulties for the animal, which has, for example, an unusual way of moving.
The heads move in opposite directions and independently of each other, the snake needs to adopt an effective lotion mechanism. “She rests one head on top of the other. This seems like the smartest way for them to move.”
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Evans says he is curious about the feeding process of the animal, whose species is commonly known as the "southern brown edora snake". According to the IFLScience website, these animals swallow an egg whole, including the shell, which they then regurgitate.
“I'm intrigued to know if she can feed herself or not. These brown snakes only in eggs, so they must be small bird eggs”, wrote the researcher, who, at the end of the post, thanked the citizens who found the animal and called him to the rescue.
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