Two-Faced Lamb

Ananova reports (HT WorldNetDaily) that a two-headed lamb has been born in China, one of four lambs born to the ewe. From looking at the picture, it's more of a two-faced, rather than a completely two-headed lamb. Either way, it's a conjoined twin, heavy on the "joined" and easy on the "twin."

The article reminds me of growing up in San Diego, where the zoo regularly had two-headed king snakes on exhibit. Here's a link to an item on two different 2-headed snakes. The thing that fascinates me about the lamb and the snakes is how the one-bodied animal is able to function with either two brains (the snakes) or with what looks like a shared/blended brain (the lamb).

One of my favorite classes, when I was getting my bachelors degree in Psychology, was The Brain and Behavior. The lamb article says that "both heads bleat together when the lamb sees people approaching." Do they bleat exactly together? If so, then their brain probably has one vocal center that controls both heads. The picture shows the two heads feeding. Is this also a shared process in the brain, or are their mouths controlled separately? We can sometimes learn more about the functioning of normal brains by studying the abnormal ones.

I remember reading a different article about the corn snake at the SD Zoo (long, long ago), and it said they had to feed the two heads separately, holding one head down with a branched stick, because if both heads fed together, they could die when the food on both sides made its way to the junction of their digestive tracts. It seems as though the lamb could have a similar problem, but maybe in the snake's case it's a matter of the food being bigger than the snake's head.

This article reminds me how incredibly rare conditions like this are. We count on nature being consistent within certain limits, and usually it is. Lambs have four legs, two ears, a swishy little tail, one head, and they grow wool. Which is why this lamb is news. Sometimes nature just likes to throw us a curve.