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Few creatures strike more fear than slithering snakes. But when they're born with two heads, they're the stuff of science fiction. The ultimate mutant odd couple. Come on, guys. We need each other. There we go. St. Louis, Missouri at the world's only two-headed reptile convention. These scaly serpents look like kissing cousins. Four flicking tongues, eight black eyes, four hissing mouths. One's named Golden Girls, the other's called We. A mutant courtship from another planet.
What happens when two snakes are courting, they'll do these shaking behaviors as a way to communicate to each other. And what you're seeing is you're seeing Golden Girls is very interested in We. Golden Girls is a star in her own right. Born in captivity, she hails from West Fork, Arkansas. This devoted owner collects rare reptiles, but Golden Girls is his prize with a $20,000 plus price tag. Her albino coloring's also extremely rare. The rest of her rat snake kin are black. But Golden Girls' most striking mutation is her second head. The conjoining happened in the womb, not in the genes.
This X-ray of a similar two-headed snake shows a clear fork in the spine. The result of two twins failing to separate completely even after forming two craniums. You can see that the fusion occurs very, very high up. So, just probably at the end of the head skeleton, and then the animal is a single body all the rest of the way down. Like these other two-headed snakes, Golden Girls has a condition called polycephaly, meaning multi-headed. Two-headed snakes sometimes attack themselves, thinking they're seeing another snake.
Golden Girls' heads often disagree, fighting over their direction. And some speculate she may even share sex traits from two separate genders. It's all part of two being forced to live as one. Oklahoma City. A rambunctious mutt born with no front legs had little odds of survival, until an adoptive family took her in and named her Faith. The ultimate mutant adaptation. [snorts] Faith never stood a chance at normal. Dogs naturally balance their weight over four legs.
Faith's deformity came from a birth defect called dismelia. Dismelia means the absence of a limb. And in this case, the dog's forelimbs are affected, but the hind limbs look completely normal. At first, Faith had to be carried. But all that changed when she faced some dog-to-dog combat. We had a corgi puppy that bit her heel and took her toy away, or maybe some food. And she just bolted after him, you know, one foot in front of the other. But Faith's transformation from four-legged quadruped to upright biped is remarkable. Like Faith, dogs have eight distinct thoracic muscles. Faith's uniquely developed chest grew as she struggled to stay upright, forcing the weight-bearing muscles to strengthen under constant stress.
Momentum helps keep her balanced. I think she thinks she's a human. I mean, look at her walking around. She just gets around as good as we do. She'll take your food off the table. She acts like any other dog, any other place. I mean, she'll chase a rabbit, she'll chase a duck, she'll chase a cat. To her owners, she's more human than canine. The ultimate mutant adaptation is an inspiration. I seriously see a best friend, a guardian angel, something very special. In the bizarre bell curve between normal and different, some mutants are the ultimate double features. They don't share a body, they share a head.
Conjoined head animals cram two skulls into one. They come in almost any species. Calves with conjoined heads are often stillborn. Those birthed alive don't last long. But in rare cases, a remarkable two-headed mutant cheats death. Edgewood, Iowa. This young pig struggles with a life-threatening mutation. This shocked owner had no idea what his pregnant sow had delivered until he saw this once in a lifetime piglet. I kind of looked over. I didn't know what it was. So, once I figured out what it was, I thought I better take it away so the sow wouldn't lay on it.
Meet Rudy. Two snouts, two mouths, four legs, three eyes, two ears. It's strange mutant math, but it adds up to one determined pig. We called Rudy cuz it's got two noses and it's kind of like got twice the rooting power. So, it kind of reminds me of that movie I saw Rudy when nobody thought he could really do it. So, But, what went wrong? Surprisingly, though Rudy's head looks like two pigs fused together, with this mutation, there's no point blaming a parasitic twin.
Rudy's got an unusual genetic code. It turns out that these groups of cells that are going to give rise to much of the facial skeleton, they get an extra signal of a growth factor. And so, two faces seem to develop on one head. But, Rudy's head's hard to fathom. Too much of a certain genetically controlled protein widened his face so far, he kept making more facial features. Yet, incredibly, his skull is a single unit. I know this pig well because I actually met the pig. His three eyes, and the center eye really was fused. He had two complete upper jaws and lower jaws, and two mouths that operated independently.
Carrying so much more than he needs, Rudy faces tough obstacles. Simple tasks like feeding are extremely difficult. But, to these owners, the ultimate mutant double feature is just a pig with a powerful will to live. Two-faced cats are extremely rare. As these examples show, many are stillborn. Most terminate early in pregnancy or they live just hours. In nature, they would certainly die. It is a huge job to take care of animals that are deformed. And you know, I think that this is just an example of how much we love our animals. Um that we will try to keep them alive.
Millbury, Massachusetts. One cat not only beat the odds, he became a sensation. Named Frank and Louie, he's a healthy domestic feline adopted from birth by a veterinary nurse. Oh, there you go. It's okay. You want to see the baby? Frank and Louie's deformity is literally jaw-dropping. Another case of a genetic signal to build two faces instead of one. But Frank and Louie has more than just a few duplicate parts. He has two entire faces. As this x-ray of another double-faced cat shows, a hodgepodge skull is chaos. In this case, the faces are so separate that you can see four eyes, two mouths, two noses, etc.
Frank and Louie's biggest challenge? Battling blind spots. For a 180° view, he swivels his head from side to side. His brain takes care of the rest, fusing images to form a complete picture. This extreme double feature mutant may never be considered normal, but he's one of nature's most incredible creations.
