Life confusing for two-headed snakes

The two-headed monsters of myth may have a basis in reality. Two-headed snakes are rare but not unheard of, and one recently found in Spain is giving scientists an opportunity to study how the anomaly affects their ability to hunt and mate. "We hear of one every several years," said Gordon Burghardt, a herpetologist at the University of Tennessee who has studied several two-headed snakes. The snake in Spain, discovered near the village of Pinoso, is a two-month-old non-venomous ladder snake Elaphe scalaris. It is about eight inches (20 centimeters) long. It's probably lucky it was captured—its chances of surviving in the wild are nil, said Burghardt. "Just watching them feed, often fighting over which head will swallow the prey, shows that feeding takes a good deal of time, during which they would be highly vulnerable to predators," said Burghardt.

"They also have a great deal of difficulty deciding which direction to go, and if they had to respond to an attack quickly they would just not be capable of it." And that's assuming that both heads are hungry at the same time, and both are interested in pursuing the same prey. "Having two heads would be a hindrance in the wild," agreed James Badman of Arizona State University. "It would be much harder to catch prey." Arizona State was home to a two-headed king snake that was found as a baby. It lived for nearly 17 years in captivity at the university.
Full Article | Source: National Geographic