TIMES-UNION (Albany, New York) 20 May 03 Doing a double take over a heads-up find - Family adopts turtle with two noggins, and it's getting the attention of wildlife experts (Alan Wechsler)
Poestenkill: The Pascarell family is no stranger to unique animals. But to their six dogs, three cats, four horses, 11 fish and one hamster, add the strangest pet yet: a tiny two-headed turtle.
The terrapin was found by Gabrielle, 9, one of three children of Rob and Rebecca Pascarell. The family lives in a sprawling country house on six acres, which include a one-acre pond. It was on the pond's edge, home to a duck and a family of geese and goslings, that Gabrielle found the quarter-size painted turtle on Sunday afternoon.
She thought it was a cool-looking rock. Then the heads moved.
"It's so cute," said Rebecca Pascarell. "We can't call it a 'he' or a 'she' because we don't know what it is."
Today the reptile resides in a 25-gallon fish tank filled with gravel, water and a plastic plant. It -- or they, depending on your point of view -- appears healthy as it wanders around its new home. The right head seems to be the more dominant, the family said, but both heads move independently. Sometimes they look in different directions.
"I think it's pretty weird," said Rob Pascarell, co-owner of the Clifton Park-based company Enhanced Technology Cable. This is a family that already owns a one-eyed horse and a Papillon dog with a tongue so long it puts Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS to shame.
Ward Stone, the state wildlife pathologist, said he's never seen a live two-headed animal in his 34 years with the Department of Environmental Conservation.
"There are lots of reports of two-headed animals in the literature going back several hundred years," he said. "We are very interested."
The mutation is not likely due to man-made chemicals, as one might assume. The pond the turtle came from is fed by three springs, and Rob Pascarell is quick to point out that it doesn't glow green. Actually, the cause of such oddities can range from a chemical imbalance to drastic temperature changes before the egg hatches, Stone said.
When such animals survive, they do make headlines. The Science Museum of Minnesota kept a two-headed snapping turtle for four years until it died (one head a day before the other) in 1977, according to news reports. And last September, a Naples, Fla., resident who was monitoring sea turtles found a just-hatched two-headed turtle on the beach. She quickly released it to the ocean.
And Little Bud, a Holstein calf born on Christmas Eve with two faces but just a single head, drew herds of curious onlookers to Bly Hollow Farm in Berlin.
In the wild, two-headed animals are not likely to live long, said Stone. In this case, two heads aren't better than one -- the two skulls will slow down the turtle, causing indecision and perhaps even cause the animal to get stuck, making it a likely target for predators. Also, its -- their -- heads don't fit into the shell.
Gabrielle and sister Dominique, 7, say they are looking forward to showing the turtle to their classmates and teachers.
"It isn't that weird once you've seen him for a while," Dominique said.
While some experts told the family they didn't think the turtle would live much longer, Stone thinks otherwise because it's survived so well in the wild since it hatched in the fall.
"I have a suspicion this turtle's going to live awhile," he said.
Family adopts turtle with two noggins
Family adopts turtle with two noggins