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Polycephaly

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Heracles and the Lernaean Hydra by Gustave Moreau: The Hydra is perhaps the best known mythological multi-headed animal, also popularised in many fantasy settings.
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Heracles and the Lernaean Hydra by Gustave Moreau: The Hydra is perhaps the best known mythological multi-headed animal, also popularised in many fantasy settings.

Polycephaly is the condition of having more than one head. By far the most common use is in relation to the anatomical head, though the word has also been used for other meanings of "head". The term is derived from the prefix poly- meaning "many" and cephaly meaning "head", and encompasses bicephaly and dicephaly (both referring to two-headedness). A variation is an animal born with two faces on a single head, a condition known as diprosopus. In medical terms these are all congenital cephalic disorders.

There are many occurrences of multi-headed animals, in real life as well as in mythology. Many fantasy universes contain races of creatures with multiple heads. In heraldry and vexillology, the double-headed eagle is a common symbol, though no such animal is known to have ever existed.

Bicephalic animals are the only type of multi-headed creatures seen in the real world and form by the same process as conjoined twins: the zygote begins to split but fails to completely separate. One extreme example of this is the condition of craniopagus parasiticus, whereby a fully developed body has a parasitic twin head joined at the skull.

Contents

Mythological occurrences

The 16th-century German illustrator has been influenced by the Beast of Revelation in his depiction of the Hydra.
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The 16th-century German illustrator has been influenced by the Beast of Revelation in his depiction of the Hydra.

Greek mythology

Greek mythology contains a number of multi-headed creatures. Typhon, a vast grisly monster with a hundred heads and a hundred serpents issuing from his thighs, is often described as having several offspring with Echidna, a creature with the body of a serpent but the face of a beautiful woman. Their offspring account for all the major monsters of Greek mythos, including: Other accounts state that some of these creatures were the offspring of Phorcys and Ceto. Phorcys is also said to have fathered Scylla, a giant monster with six dogs' heads, which terrorises Odysseus and his crew.

Other mythologies

Real occurrences

Humans

Abigail Hensel (left) and Brittany Hensel (right)
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Abigail Hensel (left) and Brittany Hensel (right)

Dicephalic conjoined twins (dicephalus dipus) are humans with two heads.

Animals

Snakes

There have been numerous reports of two-headed snakes around the world, making them the most commonly-occurring two-headed animal (though still extremely rare). While they usually only live for a few months, some others have lived a full life and even reproduced (with the offspring born normal). The two heads may fight for food, and even try to swallow each other. A two-headed black rat snake with separate throats and stomachs survived for 20 years. "We", an albino rat snake, has survived in captivity for 6 years (as of 2006), and is expected to live an additional 10 years; both heads share the same stomach. It was scheduled to be auctioned on eBay with an expected price tag of $150,000 (£87,000), though their policy of not trading in live animals prevented the sale. There is some speculation that the inbreeding of snakes in captivity increases the chances of a two-headed birth. A preserved two-headed snake is on display in the Museum at the Georgia State Capitol Building in Atlanta, along with a stillborn two-headed calf and stuffed squirrels posed to 'play poker'.

Turtles and tortoises

In 2003 a two-headed angulate tortoise was discovered in South Africa, with the only other known case in the region reported in the early 1980s. A two-headed Mediterranean spur-thighed tortoise was born in Dorchester, England in 2004, to a breeder who named the twosome Solomon and Sheba. A two-headed olive ridley sea turtle found in Costa Rica by the World Wildlife Fund was reported in 2005. A baby turtle of unknown species was also reported in Havana, Cuba in 2005. As of 2006, a living two-headed tortoise named Janus is being displayed in the Museum of Natural History of Geneva.

Cats

A two-faced kitten named Image was born and died in 2000 in Pennsylvania. Another two-faced kitten, Deuce, was born in Florida in March 2005 and was put down shortly thereafter, having come down with pneumonia. A two-faced kitten named Gemini was born in Oregon in June 2005. The Laing Museum in the small town of Newburgh, Fife, Scotland, preserves the stuffed body of a two-headed kitten born in the 19th century on Mugdrum Island, an island in the Firth of Tay to the north of the town.

Cattle

A preserved stillborn two-headed calf is on display in the Museum at the Georgia State Capitol Building in Atlanta. A two-faced calf is preserved at the Douglas County Museum in Waterville, Washington, USA. The calf lived for ten days after birth.

Other occurrences

Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, from the TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, from the TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Demonology

Film

Ray Harryhausen created several two-headed models for stop-motion animation in films. Dioskilos, the guardian of Medusa's shrine in 1981's Clash of the Titans, is a ferocious dog with two heads. The model was originally intended to have three heads but, according to Harryhausen, "looked far too grotesque and top heavy and was therefore totally unbelievable". His work on The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad included a two-headed roc, and Jason and the Argonauts battled a seven-headed hydra of Harryhausen's creation.

Other films that have featured two-headed creatures include:

There have also been several films including two-headed people: The film Monty Python and the Holy Grail features a three-headed knight.

Literature

Fantasy series

Other

See also

References

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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