Strangest Two-Headed Animals

 Let's check out some weird two-headed animals!

It’s no secret that the animals of our world come in all shapes and sizes. But even within single species or subspecies, sometimes nature and genetics start seeing double, resulting in something that usually seems limited to the realms of mythology: two-headed animals!

From the strangely adorable to the truly nightmarish, coming up are some of the weirdest two-headed animals ever seen.

Science Behind Two-Headed Animals

It’s probably not a huge surprise to learn that a creature being born with two heads instead of one, a condition known as bicephaly, is incredibly rare.

Given that very few wild animals born with two heads, or two faces, survive long enough to be spotted by humans, it’s hard to determine exactly how common bicephaly is, though very rough estimates place the figure at around one in 100,000 births.

So how exactly do creatures end up with two noggins? Well, bicephaly usually occurs when an early embryo splits in an incomplete manner.

Normally, twins form when a fertilized egg divides, producing a second embryo with the same genetic information.

Occasionally, this process of division is interrupted due to temperature or chemical issues, resulting in an embryo which is only partially divided. The two embryos develop, physically connected, sometimes at the head, sometimes at the face, and sometimes at the body.