Another photo of a two-headed shark has surfaced. The first was that of a bull shark found recently by fishermen in the Florida Keys. The second, published Thursday by National Geographic , shows a baby blue shark with two heads (pictured at right).
Very bizarre, since only about a half-dozen cases of two-headed sharks have been documented.
But based purely on appearance, many will agree that when it comes to bizarre-looking specimens the one-eyed Cyclops shark captured in 2011 in Mexico's Sea of Cortez still reigns supreme.
The two-headed blue shark was found in 2008 by Christopher Johnston, during a longlining expedition in the Indian Ocean. He supplied the accompanying image to National Geographic.
"We pulled up a pregnant blue shark, cut it open, and there was the two-headed one," he said. "It was about two-thirds the size of the rest of the pups in length. I put it in the tank on the deck. It swam a little while, but it couldn鈥檛 swim properly, it just swam in one spot as if it were on a treadmill. I tried feeding it squid but it wasn鈥檛 interested."
It's believed that two-headed sharks would be vulnerable to predation and would not survive in the wild. This one eventually died.
After this website broke the story about the one-eyed cyclops shark, thanks to a tip from Pisces Sportfishing , the image went viral and lots of people didn't believe the shark was real.
The story became more believable , however, after Felipe Galv谩n-Maga帽a, a prominent Mexican scientist, acknowledged that he had inspected the shark and had even written a paper on the discovery.
That albino shark fetus, with what appeared to be a single eye perfectly centered on its forehead, was one of 10 babies removed from a pregnant bull shark by fishermen near La Paz.
The shark, which was caught via a baited line beneath a buoy, was dead when it was pulled up by commercial fishermen.
To read more about the two-headed blue shark, click on the National Geographic link atop this post or see David Strege's story on the GrindTv Big Blue blog .
--Pete Thomas
--Blue shark image is courtesy of Christopher Johnston, via National Geographic
