A two-headed turtle is swimming and eating just fine

A diamondback terrapin hatched on Cape Cod this summer with four legs, a patterned shell and two heads. Volunteers with the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary found it at a protected nesting site and brought it to the Cape Wildlife Center in Barnstable, Massachusetts, on September 17. It weighed 5.2 grams, about as much as a nickel. The condition, called bicephaly, happens when an embryo starts to split into twins and never fully separates. Veterinarians say the hatchling is swimming and eating normally, and the two heads are not identical in temperament. "The left head has the bigger personality," said Zak Mertz, CEO of the New England Wildlife Centers. Lead vet tech Robyn Rohm noted the same head was "biting the day he came in." It is the third two-headed terrapin the center has cared for in six years. Once it grows, CT scans will show how its anatomy is arranged inside the shell.