Here’s something you don’t see every day – a double-headed dolphin! This week the two-headed immature dolphin washed ashore in Turkey, where a sports coach alerted authorities.
Tugrul Metin told Daily Mail that he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when he saw the conjoined two-headed dolphin floating off the coast of Izmir, but once he was convinced that was he saw was indeed a double-headed dolphin, he called the police.
Currently undergoing lab testing, the double-headed dolphin had two heads attached to one body. Local news reports suggest that one eye and one blowhole were not open.
Live Science notes that the rare condition of having more than one head is called polycephaly is caused when an embryo incompletely divides to form two separate individuals.
Related: Mine-detecting dolphins
At just three-feet, the mammal is roughly one-year-old.
Associate professor Mehmet Gokoglu from the marine-biology department at the Ak Deniz University told Daily Mail that he relished an opportunity to study the dolphin.
“Such a dolphin is a very rare occurrence,” he said. “Similar to the occurrence of conjoined human twins.”
Author: Tafline Laylin
As a tour leader who led “eco-friendly” camping trips throughout North America, Tafline soon realized that she was instead leaving behind a trail of gas fumes, plastic bottles and Pringles. In fact, wherever she traveled – whether it was Viet Nam or South Africa or England – it became clear how inefficiently the mandate to re-think our consumer culture is reaching the general public. Born in Iran, raised in South Africa and the United States, she currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East. Tafline can be reached at tafline (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
