The Earth is truly an amazing place. I am not talking about this from the "humans are amazing" perspective, but a naturalistic one. This world is full of beautiful forests and jungles filled with equally beautiful wildlife. There are towering mountains that stand above all and canyons that offer sublime views. However, the part of the Earth that holds true majesty that puts everything else on this little blue marble to shame is the ocean.
About seventy percent of the Earth's surface is water. I widely known fact, yes, but a less known fact is that humans have only explored five percent of the Earth's oceans. We, the beings that have sent a man to the moon and sent multiple probes out into space in order to document the other eight planets that make up out solar system, have barely explored our own world. There is no telling how many secrets the oceans still hold beneath its waters. Heck, new creatures are still popping up left and right. From the blobfish to the jawfish the ocean is constantly surprising us with new and exotic looking creatures, but there is one that I never thought could exist and it is not the Loch Ness Monster. I am talking about a two-headed shark.
Now there have been a few Sci Fi movies where there are completely unrealistic sharks that go out of their way to kill humans. If I recall there have been a couple regarding sharks that have multiple heads, but I never thought that such a creature could exist outside of the sliver screen. Needless to say that when I heard of such creatures having been found in Mediterranean waters.
A group of scientists from Spain found an Atlantic sawtail catshark embryo that they reported to have two heads complete with two sets of eyes, two mouths, two separate gill openings, two stomachs, and two brains. Meaning each head can act independently from the other. This is known as dicephaly, the condition in which an animal is born with two heads. It is a rare trait that has been recorded in snakes, dolphins, and even people and so far there have been seven separate cases where a two-headed shark has been found.
Now, for those that fear that we are going to have monstrous two-headed man-eating sharks, there is nothing to fear. Scientists report that animals that are born with dicephaly are not known to live to adulthood. That being said, scientists are baffled by this phenomenon. There is no known reason for this trait to occur, but, rest assured, scientists will soon find an answer to this oddity.
