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This wonderful snake have two heads. One day one ten-year-old
American boy from Kentucky tried to pick up a snake with a stick and then noticed, that it is two-headed! Imagine how surprised
he was when the snake grabbed the stick with both heads!
Two-headed snakes are not as rare as you might think. They have been found in the Unated States, Argentina, Honduras,
Sri Lanka and Spain.
Gordon Burdhardt, zoologist at the university of Tennessee, has studied several two-headed snakes.
And every time the heads were so independent they even fought for food.
Sometimes
the heads become so aggressive they can even try to eat each other!
Two-headed snakes also have a great deal
of difficultly deciding which direction to do. That’s probably because one head wants to turn left and the other one
wants to turn right.
A lack of understanding between two heads can lead to even greater difficulties: a predator would
quickly swallow the hesitant snake.
“So their chances of surviving in the wild are nil”, – says Burdhardt.
“They can be easily attacked by predators. Two heads are NOT always better than one”.
Even in captivity, there
are problems. Food should be given to one head first and a moment later to the other one. If both months are busy chewing,
they won’t attack each other.
On the whole, though, they can do quite well in captivity, says Burdhardt.
Thelma and Louise, a two-headed boa constrictor was born
in Ney0York. Experts don’t know why she was born this way. Indy the snake has 26 brothers and sisters but because she’s
one of the kind, she could one day be sold for about $500,000 to a zoo or a collector.
Right now Indy’s second head
can’t eat, drink or breathe but it flicks its tongue and looks around.
The two-headed monsters of myth may have
a basis in reality!
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