By John Roach,
Contributing Writer, NBC News
On the heels
of recent news about a two-headed bull shark, a two-headed pig has been born in
a village in east China
The photo
shows a pig with two snouts, two ears and what appears to be a shared eye. A
local veterinarian told the AFP news agency the animal is suffering a deformity
and is unlikely to survive.
The deformity
may be the same condition, called "axial bifurcation," that
researchers determined was the cause of the two-headed bull shark in a study
published this March in Journal of Fish Biology.
It results
from an embryo splitting into two separate organisms, or twins, but the process
is incomplete.
"Halfway
through the process of forming twins, the embryo stops dividing," Michael
Wagner, a researcher at Michigan
State University
The mutation,
he added, occurs across animals, including humans.
While rare, in
addition to the pig shown here and the shark, two-headed turtles, snakes, kittens,
and other critters have been reported in recent years.
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