Its small body looked just as you’d expect for a newborn porpoise, but with one inescapable difference: it had two perfectly formed heads.Rico says they won't make that mistake again...
The two male calves, who shared one body, were the first reported case of conjoined twins in the harbor porpoise species (Phocoena phocoena). Sadly, the twins are thought to have died shortly after birth.
The discovery was reported in the latest issue of the Deinse journal from the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
The twins were pulled from the water by a team of fishermen working in the southern North Sea in May of 2017. Unfortunately, the crew thought it was illegal to keep the remains, so they threw the specimen back into the sea, but not before taking a series of photographs.
Conjoined twins are extremely rare in wild animals. As well as being the first recorded case of conjoined twins in their species, the twins are only the tenth known case in the entire whale and dolphin family. However, the true number of incidences is unknown, most likely due to high rates of prenatal and antenatal mortality.
18 June 2017
Fishermen, clueless
Kara Segedin has a BBC article about some fishermen who threw away a fortune:
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