Well, from educated oppinions we have every reason to believe that "Lucky Destiny" is one of the animals that has every liklihood to live a long healthy life. This is due to multiple x-rays showing her development thus far and the lack of the lump/kink (I forget the name the scientist used to define) where her heads fuse. I work at a vet clinic so I will be able to continue taking xrays every so often. I think I'll do every 3 months for the first year and then twice yearly as long as I have her.



As for her condition. It seems the most modern thought on most two headed snakes, is that it is a freak occurance that often happens when some sort of trauma happens to the egg at a precise moment of development. This is part of the reason it shows up most frequently in colubrids or snakes like garters, which occur in areas where cold weather or temperature fluctuations are most likely to occur.



I don't incubate my cornsnake eggs in an incubator, rather I have them above some racks in my snake room. I have very wild tempertature fluctuations, particularly in early summer. This supports the theory of trauma being the likly cause of her "two headedness". In fact that in 6 years I have produced corns I've had 4 two headed occur while only the one hatched live. I have also had a single head two bodied snake and a "no headed" snake. Only two of these "freaks" were half siblings to eachother and only one had parents that were "line bred".



Since I work in a vet clinic I have been able to preserve all of the odd specimens in formaldehyde .



Rebecca

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