Two brains, two noses, but only two ears – a cow has been born in India to the delight of locals with a singular body with two conjoined heads attached, and astonishingly it’s thriving
People in a town in India have been left astonished by the miracle birth of a two-faced cow.
A single body is shared by two heads, which in turn are each complete with two eyes and a nose apiece.
However, the “divine” creature, born in the northeast of the country, sees the two heads also share a mouth and have two ears between them.
In the country’s predominant religion of Hinduism, the cow is considered sacred with the slaughter of bovines a prohibited and highly controversial topic in the country.
This particular calf is understood to be, despite the deformities, healthy.
Polycephaly, or dicephalic parapagus, is the condition often behind animals being born with two heads, its origin stemming from Greek word for many, poly, and kephale, meaning head.
Vets reckon such conditions are normally caused by the abnormal development of cells when the embryo is being formed.
When animals are born with such a condition their life expectancy is generally very low – only surviving a couple of months.
While only 11 days old at the time of writing, this cow is largely thought to have a clean bill of health.
Polycephalic animals usually have brains in each of the two heads with control over limbs tending to be split.
There is, however, no clear definition of how this split is defined and tends to differ on a case-to-case basis but at least at the time of writing, it seems like for now for this particular newborn, things are working out alright.
