Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 28, 1995 TAG: 9511280074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Medium
``It's probably a little bit of both,'' said John Keinath, a professor at Thomas Nelson Community College where the two-headed creature lives. ``We've been trying to decide for years whether it's an `it' or a `them.'''
The animal is almost a garden-variety snapping turtle. It has one shell, one tail and four legs. What's different are the two fully formed heads.
Keinath named it ``This and That.''
The just-hatched turtle was found a little more than five years ago on Gwynn's Island. The finder contacted Keinath, then coordinator of a sea turtle program at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
The finder probably saved the turtle from death. Keinath said it was headed toward the Chesapeake Bay, an inhospitable body of salty water for a freshwater creature.
The turtle sometimes gives its body conflicting signals. Each head seems to control the front leg on its side of the body, but both heads have some input into both rear legs.
``It's pretty uncoordinated,'' Keinath said.
Alan Savitzky, a biological sciences professor at Old Dominion University, said two-headed reptiles aren't that unusual. They survive such conditions because they don't have complicated metabolisms like mammals.
``If you only need to eat every once in a while, you can survive long enough to be found,'' Savitzky said.
He guessed the reason for the two heads was environmental rather than genetic.
Exactly how much of This and That is one turtle on the inside and how much is dual won't be known until the creature lives out its life. There's only so much that can be determined from observation, said biology student Deborah Root-Stuparich.
``I don't want to see him die,'' she said. ``But if he did, it certainly would be interesting to dissect him and see what's in there.''
Keinath said the two heads seem to have a fairly egalitarian relationship.
But Susan Fortunato, supervisor of the biology lab at the community college, said the left head sometimes wrestles food away from the right one and seems to get its way more often when the creature moves.
by CNB