A unique two-headed reptile is making its comeback at the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco.
First donated to the zoo in 2016 after being discovered by a local family, the zoo’s two-headed western rat snake is back on display after recuperating from an injury the last couple of years, Fox 4 KDFW reported.
The snake’s two-headed condition is known as polycephaly. It is more common among reptiles than mammals and can emerge due to either an incomplete division of a single embryo or two separate embryos not fully merging.
In the case of Pancho and Lefty, having two heads is not better than one.
“They seem to have different personalities in that the right head [Pancho] is more dominant in terms of feeding and movement,” a spokesperson for the zoo explained to Newsweek. “The left head [Lefty] will occasionally eat but it seems to mostly go along with wherever the right head wants to go.”
Since Pancho and Lefty share a body, they often issue it conflicting commands, making the snake more susceptible to injury. This is especially true when its heads want to move in separate directions.
Such an incident led to Pancho and Lefty’s injury in February 2021.
“He had a wound on his left neck so we took him off exhibit to heal,” officials from the zoo said, per Newsweek. “Our veterinary and reptile teams worked hard to keep the wound bandaged and clean. It took until June last year for the wound to fully heal. Now that he has been eating well and the wound has been fully closed for a year, we are excited to put him back out in the freshwater aquarium building.”
The zookeepers have tried to make the new exhibit as safe for the snake as possible by limiting obstacles and laying down lots of grass.
“We are hoping that this design provides enough cover for the snake to feel secure while also being physically safe, so he does not injure his neck again,” the zoo told Newsweek.
Zookeepers are constantly monitoring the snake’s health. In the wild, the 8-year-old snake likely would not have survived so long.
