By Euro Weekly News Media • Published: 26 Oct 2016 • 12:31
AS if the Costa del Sol didn’t have enough problems with fears of Jaws-like beasts roaming the Mediterranean, local scientists have found a two-headed shark.
With each head possessing a mouth, two eyes, and a brain, the two were wedded just behind the gills according to a paper recently published in the Journal of Fish Biology.
The creature was still at the embryonic stage when discovered and also had “two hearts, two oesophaguses, two stomachs, two livers, but a single intestine with a spiral valve” wrote the team from the University of Malaga.
The researchers were scouring 797 embryos in an extensive study of the cardiovascular system of the endangered Galeus Atlanticus which were collected in the western Mediterranean. The species only grows to around 45cm in length and the team reckon that the two-headed embryo is simply a genetic spin-off, rather than a pollution induced Simpson-style mutation.
They wrote that it would be extremely unlikely that such a shark could survive in the wild as it would be easy prey and have trouble catching and digesting food.
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