KUALA TERENGGANU – A group of volunteers from Lang Tengah Turtle Watch (LTTW) made an amazing discovery on Tuesday when they found a newly hatched dicephalic green sea turtle at a nesting site in Tg Jara Resort, Dungun.
LTTW site manager, Abidah Zaaba, said that they initially thought the hatchling was a normal turtle when they saw it trying to push through the sand.
“But after it had completely emerged, we saw that it had two heads,” she told reporters yesterday, adding that the nest contained 110 eggs and a post-emergence inspection found that 89 had hatched.
Abidah said that although another two-headed turtle was discovered last June at the hatchery, which opened in 2016, this was the first time a live one had been found.
LTTW’s Facebook post on the “miracle hatchling” said that dicephalism is an unusual phenomenon in nature.
Nevertheless, it informed that the “the two heads shared a similar morphology and responded differently to external stimuli.”
“Although the turtle’s coordination of voluntary movements was distorted, the right head was evidently dominant.
“The facial scales on each head are different, meaning they could be identified as different individuals via (a) photo identification technique.”
LTTW also pointed out that “nearly all recorded two-headed animals live for shorter periods than normal individuals”.
Rantau Abang Fisheries Research Institute (FRI) director, Sharum Yusof, said that while normal hatchlings are released into the sea, “unusual finds like a two-headed turtle should be surrendered to the relevant people (to be cared for)”.
He said the FRI was informed of the discovery and that the turtle is now with the Turtle Conservation and Information Centre (TCIC) in Rantau Abang under the Fisheries Department.
LTTW said that because TCIC is just 15 minutes away from their project site, they will be keeping tabs on the hatchling. – Bernama, September 2, 2022
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