A two-headed buffalo calf was born on a Pakistani farm and was hailed as a miracle.
The calf was born on September 27 at Karachi’s Lucky Foods Dairy Farm and has yet to be named.
It has one body, two heads, four eyes, two mouths, two noses, and four ears due to polycephaly, a rare disorder in which an animal is born with more than one head. The disease is thought to arise when an embryo begins to split into twins but then pauses, leaving the twins connected. Because the calf is too weak to lift his hefty head, he cannot suckle from his mother and must be fed by bottle.
‘A two-headed calf!’ remarked Salman Mamnoon Hussain, CEO of Lucky Foods Dairy. When the farm manager told me the news over the phone, I couldn’t believe it.
‘I dashed to the farm to check on the calf. ‘It’s a miracle.’ ‘When I touched the calf, I was shocked to notice that one of his heads was chilly and the other was a little heated,’ Mr Hussain explained.
He stated that they did not anticipate the calf would survive even a day, but the unusual animal has beaten the odds by surviving for a week.
Because of the weight of his head, the calf is unable to stand on his own.
‘The farm vets are looking after the calf. We believed he’d just live for a day, but he’s already been alive for almost 100 hours.
‘I want to see him live, to see him get up, move, and function,’ he added.
Each polycephalic animal’s head has its own brain, and they share control of the organs and limbs, albeit the particular topology of the connections varies from case to case.
Animals suffering from the illness seldom live more than a few months.
