THE HAGUE, June 15 (Xinhua) -- A group of Dutch fishermen recently caught a two-headed porpoise off the coast of the Netherlands, which surprised scientists, the New Scientist reported on Wednesday.
With a single body and two fully grown heads, the probably dead porpoise shocked the fishermen who took several pictures of it and threw the mammal back into the sea for fear that it might bring them any trouble.
"Normal twins are extremely rare in cetaceans. There is simply not enough room in the body of the female to give room to more than one fetus," Erwin Kompanje at the Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam said to the New Scientist.
Though it's regrettable that researchers lost the chance to examine the porpoise directly, Kompanje concluded that the two-headed porpoise died shortly after birth after analyzing the pictures.
According to a previous report, the two-headed porpoise is the 10th example of a conjoined twin to be discovered in the cetaceans family.
"Much is unknown," Kompanje was quoted as saying.
According to the National Geographic, a dead two-headed dolphin was washed ashore in Turkey in August 2014, which had made waves across the internet.
