Wildlife experts are caring for the diamondback terrapin that hatched with two heads at a protected nesting site in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Both heads are alert and showing interest in food — encouraging signs for the tiny turtle.
“We are monitoring and making sure they’re bright and alert; they’re reactive. We’re making sure that we’re offering food and that both heads are active and looking around and trying to eat. So far they are, which is awesome,” Zak Mertz, CEO of New England Wildlife Centers, told Popular Science in a story published Tuesday, Sept. 22. “And so we kind of use that as a barometer for comfort.”
Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary brought the hatchling to the Cape Wildlife Center in Barnstable for care about a week ago.
Bicephaly, the condition of having more than one head, is extremely rare. It says the condition can develop when one embryo splits incompletely or two embryos fuse incompletely.
“This is actually the third set we have seen within the last six years,” Mertz told Popular Science. “The belief is that bicephaly happens when an embryo goes to split — like it would for twins or something—but doesn’t separate fully. And because of that, each case might have a slightly different orientation, they might have more or less overlapping anatomy.”
Staff has yet to determine exactly how much anatomy the two heads share. Mertz thinks this hatchling may have more shared anatomy than the other two-headed terrapins the center has seen, which he considers a good sign.
Even more so since diamondback terrapins are a threatened species in Massachusetts.
The team plans to use advanced imaging to guide the turtle’s care. Staff will decide whether it can eventually return to the wild as it grows.
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