Re: two headed turtle

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Posted by EricO on May 26, 2000 at 11:36:37:

In Reply to: two headed turtle posted by Amy on May 25, 2000 at 11:14:04:

Having owned two of them, I can offer some advice: usually both heads will eat, but they did not have an excpetional appetite. They are more like siamese twins conjoned at the chest in anatomy than strictly two headed. They are not particularly well coordinated for swimming, so you should keep them in water shallow enough that they can easily reach the surfaced, even when turned over on their back. Now for the sad part: I have never heard of a two-headed turtle surviving adolescence. Unlike two-headed snakes that regularly reach maturity, it seems that they may develop fatal anatomical flaws as they grow, probably due, in my opinion, to the fact that they are contained in a rigid shell that may constrain expansion of their soft parts and may lead to blood vessel or nerve constriction. The last one I had was kept by an extremely consiencious woman who spent a lot of time with it and had it feeding fairly well, but one day, without warning, one of the heads suddenly became comatose and the other head died within a few days, probably because of postmortem decomposition of the other part. If anyone has had or heard about a more hopeful experience, please post.

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: Having owned two of them, I can offer some advice: usually both heads will eat, but they did not have an excpetional appetite. They are more like siamese twins conjoned at the chest in anatomy than strictly two headed. They are not particularly well coordinated for swimming, so you should keep them in water shallow enough that they can easily reach the surfaced, even when turned over on their back. Now for the sad part: I have never heard of a two-headed turtle surviving adolescence. Unlike two-headed snakes that regularly reach maturity, it seems that they may develop fatal anatomical flaws as they grow, probably due, in my opinion, to the fact that they are contained in a rigid shell that may constrain expansion of their soft parts and may lead to blood vessel or nerve constriction. The last one I had was kept by an extremely consiencious woman who spent a lot of time with it and had it feeding fairly well, but one day, without warning, one of the heads suddenly became comatose and the other head died within a few days, probably because of postmortem decomposition of the other part. If anyone has had or heard about a more hopeful experience, please post.

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