Turtle Monitors Found 2-Headed Sea Turtle On South Carolina Beach

A group of sea turtle monitors found a 2-headed loggerhead hatchling on a beach in South Carolina earlier this week.

According to a local news outlet, the sea turtle was found alive on Tuesday this week and was released into the ocean afterward.

Amber Kuehn, a marine biologist who is also the leader of the group, said that the genetic mutation caused the second head of the turtle.

The group named the turtle as squirt and crush.

The group shared a picture of squirt and crush on Facebook earlier this week.

The image they shared showed the small body of the turtle.

Biologist Amber said that the turtle was having problems with swimming. This was caused by the 2 heads, each flipper is controlled by the other head and the 2 weren’t working together.

Amber explained, “There’s a bump that goes down the center of turtle’s shells and there are two of them here, so they probably each have their own spine. They walked it past the surf and put it in the water and, of course, with two different flippers it didn’t swim well at all.”

Amber mentioned that the chances of the 2-headed turtle surviving are not that good.

She added, “In general, even for the healthy ones, it’s one in a hundred. And this one might have been healthy, it’s just their destination from South Carolina is the Gulf Stream – it’s a warm water current and from Hilton Head it’s 70 miles offshore.”

She continued, “So for our hatchlings it’s a three-day swim to the Gulf Stream. A lot can happen in three days – fish eat them, everything eats them. That’s why there’s so many entering the water at once, because if 100 enter the water, 99 of the brothers and sisters have to get eaten for that one to make it.”

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