A fisherman in India was left shocked after he captured a 2-headed baby shark with weird looking eyes and mutated fins.
The fish that he captured was a newborn, confirmed a number of researchers.
Nitil Patel, the fisherman from India, was fishing in the waters of Maharashtra when he paused to take a look at the net that he had trapped.
When checking it out, he found a strange-looking creature with 2 heads.
Patel ended up taking a number of pictures.
The sad part about this is that he did not know that such animals are extremely rare, so he ended up throwing it back into the sea.
Patel later shared the images with the Marine Fisheries Research Institute.
The Marine Fisheries Research Institute said that there are only 2 other cases of a double-headed shark in the records of India.
Talking about the catch, Patel said:
We do not eat such small fish, especially sharks, so I thought it was strange but decided to throw it anyway. We have never seen anything like this before. We believe one of the larger sharks may have given birth to this double-headed shark baby.
Swapnil Tandel, a marine biologist, said that there are a number of things that could lead a shark being born with 2 heads.
Tandel explained:
These finds are so rare that it is difficult to find a cause for the anomaly. Genetic or metabolic disorders, viruses, pollution or overfishing could be the possible reasons.
Dr. KV Akhilesh, a member of the Indian Council For Agricultural Research, released a statement about the incident.
There have only been 2 recorded instances in India of such things.
Dr. Akhilesh said:
A similar two-headed shark was reported from Gujarat in 1964, and another in 1991 from Karnataka. Others could have been observed, but were not photographed or collected.
He said that the chance of surviving the adulthood of the animal is not good because of the 2 heads.
Such animals have a hard time surviving because of their unique looks, which makes them easy food for bigger animals in the sea, and because they have a hard time surviving caused by lack of food.
Not only that, this shark has one head with deformed eyes and there were 2 first dorsal fins.
The shark could have been rescued by the fisherman and could have been brought to the authorities, where it could have grown bigger and stronger.