It’s called polycephaly, and it’s a condition that demonstrates very clearly that two heads are not always better than one, if the two heads are attached to one body. (Or, if the two heads belong to congressmen, but that’s a discussion for another day.)
In Missouri, an example has come to light, as the Burr Oak Woods Nature Center has a two-headed snake named Tiger-Lily (one head is Tiger, the other Lily) on display.
I guess they showed us:
A rare two-headed snake is on display at the Burr Oak Woods Nature Center in Missouri through the end of July.
Someone found the snake in Stone County, Missouri in 2017 and donated it to the Missouri Department of Conservation.
The snake, named Tiger-Lily, is nearly 5 feet long.
According to conservationists, caretakers had to make modifications to the conjoined identical snake twins because they were never completely separated.
There are some problems, mostly with behavior; both heads have mouths and brains, and both want to do what snakes do – eat:
“Both heads want to eat, but they share one esophagus,” Alison Bleich, MDC Interpretive Center Manager, said. “Staff will put a small cup over one head while the other eats, then switch. Otherwise, both heads would try to grab the same mouse.”
Polycephaly isn’t unknown among various vertebrate species, although it’s more common in reptiles. It’s sometimes a genetic condition caused by environmental factors, and sometimes (more often in mammals), it’s a conjoined-twinning condition when two identical twins (arising from the same fertilized egg) do not separate properly. It has been observed in snakes, as well as alligators and other reptiles.
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Biology is weird. There aren’t a lot of hard lines in biology; even the concept of what we call “species” can be kind of fuzzy. In embryonic development, where various genetic trips and triggers are going off to direct, as it were, the production of proteins that will form basic structures, things can sometimes go horribly wrong – resulting in, among other things, two-headed snakes.
Most of these critters don’t do well in the wild. Tiger and Lily, as noted above, would compete with each other for food, even though they shared one post-cranial body, and while they seem to have done all right, being as large as they were before their discovery, that’s pretty unusual. Also, consider that snakes are often preyed upon by predators – some hawks make something of a specialty of it – and the two-headed snake would have some difficulties with the usual snake-ish practice of slipping away into some tight spot where it cannot be reached.
At least Tiger and Lily are in good hands. It’s a fascinating example of what can happen in vertebrate biology, and it should serve as a great example to kids interested in the natural sciences to see how, in biology, things can suddenly take a weird turn.
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