RESEARCHERS DISCOVER AMAZING FISH IN THE SEA
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| Emexzticks.com |
Fishermen catch all sorts of things from the
ocean: fish, garbage, sometimes even sharks, but some Dutch fishermen weren't prepared
for what they caught in the North Sea last month -- a two-headed porpoise. The
rare creature turned out to be a set of conjoined newborn twins that shared a
single body. Sadly, the small mammal was
already dead when fishermen hauled it out of the chilly waters off the coast of
the Netherlands. Fearing it would be illegal to keep the dead porpoise, the
fishermen decided to throw it back to sea.
But before they did, a fisherman snapped some
photos of the surreal sight. The pictures of the odd-looking creature
eventually made their way to Dr. Erwin Kompanje of the Natural History Museum
Rotterdam. Kompanje has been studying dolphins, whales and porpoises for more
than 20 years, but he's never seen anything quite like this.
The two-headed creature "is extremely
rare," Kompanje told CBS News via email. "Normal twins are extremely
rare in cetaceans, conjoined twins even more rare." So rare, in fact,
Kompanje said out of the 700,000 harbor porpoises in the world -- with about
half of them living in the North Sea -- this was the first case of conjoined
twins in the species on record.
There have been only nine other cases of
conjoined twinning in a cetacean species, which consists of whales, porpoises
and dolphins. The most recent, in 2014, was a two-headed conjoined set of
dolphins that washed ashore in western Turkey. Like the two-headed porpoise, the
dolphins were also already dead upon discovery.
"Dolphins have to be able to swim,
directly after birth," Kompanje explained. "Conjoined twins are
unable to swim with these complex anatomy."In one of the photos of the
two-headed porpoise, researchers were able to spot an umbilical opening, which
suggests the twins died shortly after birth, according to the Online Journal of
the Natural History Museum Rotterdam.
Some researchers are lamenting the two-headed
porpoise was thrown back into the sea, because it could have provided some
unique information about the creatures' anatomy.
"As cetaceans are mammals anatomically
adapted to complete life in the sea, we are curious how the anatomy in
conjoined twins is," Kompanje said. "Especially the development of the
spinal musculature. Cetaceans have highly developed spinal musculature as they
use their spinal column for movement."
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