There Are More And More Two-headed Sharks

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Video: There Are More And More Two-headed Sharks

Video: There Are More And More Two-headed Sharks
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There Are More And More Two-headed Sharks
There Are More And More Two-headed Sharks
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In blue sharks, double-headed embryos are more common because they carry many babies - up to 50 at a time, says lead author Felipe Galvan-Magagna

There are more and more two-headed sharks - two heads, a shark
There are more and more two-headed sharks - two heads, a shark

Two-headed shark - sounds like a character in a horror movie. But they do exist, and there are more and more of them all over the world.

Several years ago, off the coast of Florida, fishermen caught a blunt shark, in whose uterus there was a two-headed embryo. In 2008, a fisherman discovered a two-headed blue shark embryo in the Indian Ocean.

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A 2011 study described coalesced blue shark twins. The mutants were caught in the Gulf of California. In blue sharks, double-headed embryos are more common because they carry many babies - up to 50 at a time, says study lead author Felipe Galván-Magagna of the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico.

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The Spanish researchers themselves raised the embryo of an Atlantic saw-tailed cat shark with two heads. During laboratory rearing of sharks, the team noticed an unusual embryo in a transparent egg. The feline shark embryo is not just an ordinary two-headed monster. This is the first example of a mutation in an oviparous shark species.

The researchers opened the egg to study the sample. The study's lead author, Valentin Sans-Coma, says it is unknown if the deformed animal would have survived. Since these are the first accreted twins found in oviparous sharks, such a cub is unlikely to live long.

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The cause of the mutation is a gene disorder, as the embryo grew up in the laboratory among 800 other samples and the eggs were not exposed to infections, chemicals or radiation. In nature, these factors can also have an impact.

Galvan-Maganya saw other strange sharks as well. For example, Cyclops sharks, which were caught along the coast of Mexico in 2011. The single eye of the dark shark is a congenital condition called cyclopia, which occurs in some species of animals, including humans.

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