Photo at URL
CAMBRIDGE CHRONICLE (Massachusetts) 28 July 05 Fan names $30K snake for coach, QB (Brad Kelly)
A new Belichick/Brady combination has arrived in Cambridge, but this one won't be calling plays or slithering away from blitzing linemen.
Van Wallach, the curatorial assistant at Harvard's Department of Invertebrates, became the owner of a rare two-headed snake at the beginning of last year's pro football season.
For Wallach, a big fan of the New England Patriots, naming the genetic mutant was easy: here was the serpentine namesake of Pats coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady.
"Belichick and Brady have been a successful duo, so it just seemed appropriate," Wallach said of the three-time world champions.
The king snake was found in Augusta, Maine. He's 11 inches long and will reach up to 3 feet.
While the two heads live in seeming harmony now, Wallach said they weren't exactly compatible in the first several weeks. During the first feeding, the right head, Belichick, attacked Brady.
"They each have an independent brain, so it took them a while to figure out that it doesn't matter who eats because they share one stomach," Wallach said.
And just like in real life, Belichick calls all the plays for the two heads. Wallach said that the right head is one vertebrate longer and does the majority of the feeding because it is more dominant than Brady.
"Brady is neurologically not as fit as Belichick, but the two of them have learned to work together in unison," Wallach said.
At birth, Belichick/Brady weighed 4 grams and was 8 inches long, but since being in Wallach's care, it has grown 3 more inches and gained an additional 5.4 grams. Wallach wants the snake to get big and healthy quickly so it will live the normal 20-year life expectancy of a king snake.
Owning Belichick/Brady puts Wallach in a herpetological elite as one of 20 people in the U.S. to have a two-headed snake.
Belichick/Brady represents the fifth scientific recording of this particular species, but there have been 600 documented cases of dicephalism - having two heads - in history. They're rare in part because they can survive only in captivity. Private collectors pay up to $30,000 for a two-headed snake.
Two-headed snakes have a disadvantage in the wild because they can't hunt or escape from predators," Wallach said.
Dicephalus snakes are a genetic mutation, but have become more common with an increase of cross-breeding two different species.
