A two-headed snake found in Liguria

It is the second specimen of the bicephalous Coronella snake in Italy

(Credits Ugo De Cresi)

GENOA – The second specimen in Italy of two-headed Coronella snake.The naturalist Ugo De Cresi announced the discovery, which occurred in Vallescriva, in the hinterland of Genoa.It's one Austrian Coronella, a completely harmless colubrid, probably just born and with reduced vital functions.The first discovery occurred in Prato in October 2007.Bicephalism, explains the expert on his Facebook page, is a genetic defect:“The two heads are completely autonomous. It is therefore complex for this specimen to even decide which direction to take.The respiratory and digestive organism is only one, but the hunger impulse reaches both heads which can sometimes attack each other.In some cases, some snakes in captivity affected by polycephaly had to cover one head to feed the other and wait for the intestine to digest the prey so as not to block the narrow intestinal systems."