Two-Headed Calf Born in Egypt
Amazing ! I can’t belive that this is for real
July 6, 2010 — This two-headed animal wonder that looks like something out of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” has been deemed a “divine miracle” by his owner.
The Associated Press reported that a cow in northern Egypt gave birth to this two-headed calf, shown above, on Saturday after a two-hour-long labor. Sobhy el-Ganzoury, the farmer who owns the calf, has to feed the animal its mother’s milk from a baby bottle because the calf can’t yet carry the weight of its heads.
Why Are Some Animals Born With Two Heads?
Polycephaly is the medical term for the condition of having more than one head, which animals develop when their “RNAi of the beta-catenin-1 gene caused posterior-facing blastemas to regenerate as heads,” according to MIT’s Department of Biology. That’s the scientific way of saying these animals have a faulty gene that causes their tissue growth to go haywire.
This disorder encompasses another condition known as Diprosopus, which is when two faces appear on a single head. A two-faced kitten made headlines in 2008 when it was born with two complete sets of eyes and mouths.
Sadly, these creatures often don’t survive for very long after they are born, although there have been some success stories of two-headed snakes surviving in captivity for years.
Photo credit: Associated Press
Thanks to Discovery News
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