As any fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Zaphod Beeblebrox can tell you, two heads are no guarantee to be better than one. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be really cool to look at, like with this incredible two-headed porpoise, the first of its kind discovered.
A case study in the Online Journal of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, that we first saw at New Scientist, reports that these amazing, never-before-seen conjoined twin harbour porpoises were caught in a fishing net off the coast of the Netherlands. Sadly, the two-headed, one-body brothers died shortly after they were born, likely before they were caught in the net. Among the signs they didn’t survive long is the fact their tail had yet to stiffen, a requirement for a porpoise to swim (which we imagine is doubly important when you have to lug around a second head).
Two-headed porpoise caught in fishing net is first ever found https://t.co/em2YqeMCnP pic.twitter.com/gVgk1cGi4R
— New Scientist (@newscientist) June 14, 2017
Because the fishermen that caught it thought it would be illegal to keep it, they returned it back to the sea. Fortunately they took a lot of pictures (which you can see more of here) for scientists to study.
Which is good, because reportedly these conjoined twins are only the 10th pair of cetaceans, which includes whales and dolphins, to ever be discovered. That’s in part because of the anatomy of cetaceans makes this type of birth far rarer.
This is such a one-of-a-kind animal it’s hard to find the right words to describe just how cool it is. Fittingly though, our reaction can best be summed up by his two-headed science-fiction brethren, Zaphod himself:
âThat really is truly amazing. Itâs so amazingly amazing, I think Iâd like to steal it.â
But how would you describe this creature? Swim into our comments section and let us know.
Featured Image: Erik Christensen
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Image: BBC