You’ve probably heard by now about the two headed kitten (or is it two-faced?) born in West Virginia last month. If you haven’t, check out the video below.
But what you probably didn’t know about is that today, a two headed calf was born in Egypt.
These two cases made me curious to find out more about their conditions.
‘Polycephaly’ is the condition of having more than one head. By far the most common use is in relation to the anatomical head, though the word has also been used for other meanings of “head”. The term is derived from the stems ”poly-” meaning ‘many’ and ”kephal-” meaning “head”, and encompasses ‘bicephaly’ and ‘dicephaly’ (both referring to ‘two-headedness’). A variation is an animal born with two faces on a single head, a condition known as diprosopus. In medical terms these are all congenital cephalic disorders.
You can read more on the subject here.
