News and Curiosity

09-07-2003 :: 2 heads are better than 1...

The picture on the left isn't a trick photograph with a good software but this is a small two-headed tortoise found by a south African man: Noel Daniels a welder of Wellington. Two-headed tortoises are not unknown, but they are most unusual, the product of a genetic deviation during the development of the embryo. The little tortoise is lovingly guest of Daniels in his backyard with other seven orphaned tortoises but..the others have only one head. Noel says that both heads feed on leaves, grass and the tortoise is quite normal and only the under side of the tortoise's shell is flat instead of rounded. There's only a little problem: when the tortoise gets a fright, the heads each want to move in its own direction, and then the feet get all tangled up. fortunately the little tortoise isn't a millipede..

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