Tigerlily will have been able to thwart all the predictions! Why ? Found in 2005 by a little boy in his garden in the city of Delta, Missouri, this American rat snake has the particularity of having… two independent heads! The reptile was then entrusted to the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center, which took great care of it. And as proof, Tigerlily is about to blow out its 17th candle.
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Two competitive heads
Alex Holmes, naturalist at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Center, explained the peculiarities of the animal. “A normal snake his size would be able to easily eat normal-sized mice. But their conjoined spine makes it more difficult to ingest all but very small young mice.”
Before adding: “The two heads share a single stomach, but we feed them both to stimulate their natural instincts and provide mental enrichment. The heads are quite competitive when they eat, so we cover one head at a time with a sippy cup and we feed each individually. We wait a while to make sure the food has passed its junction to avoid a ‘traffic jam’ of left and right head meals meeting in the esophagus.”.
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An extremely rare case
According to specialists, the birth of a two-headed snake is estimated at a chance in 100,000. In nature, their survival is very rare, by the way. “Most conjoined newborns would not survive, said Alex Holmes. Our twins, for example, struggle to decide which way to go, arguing like sisters do – which is fine for a life of quiet captivity. But if a falcona skunk or a raccoon hungry came into the wild, this slow reaction to danger would make for an easy meal.”
Survival of two-headed animals is also rare in captivity. But the fact that this snake lives to an age as old as 17 is a one in 100 million chance, according to snake expert Steve Allain, board member of the British Herpetological Society, interviewed by the Dailymail.
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He thus stated: “I know of another two-headed snake that survived to be 20 years old, so it’s not impossible for them to survive that long. However, it’s extremely unlikely. I’d say it’s probably one in a hundred million”.
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