A South China man who breeds snakes for a living made an
extraordinary discovery when he came across a baby two-headed Chinese
cobra, the People's Daily Online reports.
The unusual find at first seemed to the breeder like it would net him
a tidy sum. But soon he realized the strange creature would neither eat
nor take water, and he decided to give the snake to specialists at the
Nanning Zoo.
The snake, pencil-thin, with a dark brown backside, still has yet to
eat on its own, a Nanning Zoo official told the website. It is about 20
centimeters long and has been alive for 10 days, having shed its skin
once, they noted.
Because each head has its own brain, the two halves can move
independently, and Nanning Zoo experts say the two heads often come
together, as if they are going to fight. But scientists there say that's
because the typical cobra will move in an "S" shape, and the two heads
will naturally butt.
The rare snake could conceivably grow to a typical Chinese cobra
length of about 1.2 meters, but zoo doctors are unable to tell how much
longer it might live if it doesn't begin to eat on its own, and they
also worry about its potentially low resistance to infection.
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