Just when you thought sharks couldn’t get any more terrifying and it was safe to get in the ocean, they start showing up with two heads.
This isn’t something out of a cheap science fiction movie, it’s all too real, as scientists are finding more and more of them at an increasing rate.
The first case that started this trend was back in 2008, when angler Christian Johnson caught a blue two-headed shark in Australia.
Though other sharks species have been found with two heads, including a bull shark in 2013 that gave birth to a two-headed fetus, the most come from blue sharks.
In reality, these two headed-sharks don’t appear to live long after birth, especially since no mature sharks with two heads have been found.
The cause of this strange occurrence remains a mystery, although some believe it may be connected to recent overfishing. This is because sharks have less and less options for breeding, which has lead to much more inbreeding, causing birth defects. Other causes could even be because of a virus or side effects of pollution.
On the other hand, Dr Felipe Galván-Magaña, a marine scientist from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City, doesn’t believe there are increased cases of two-headed sharks at all. He believes the reason it seems there are more is because there are more scientific journals to publish in, allowing work that may not have been published before to have a platform.
Whatever the true cause, it’s still concerning. Let’s just hope these two-headed sharks never manage to reach maturity and perfect their hunting technique, because we should all I’ve up at that point.
