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Imagine eating if you had two heads and two mouths to feed on one body.
Such was the dilemma for a two-headed copperhead snake recently discovered in a yard in Woodbridge, Virginia.
The snake was found a week ago and pictures of it were sent to Facebook from a wildlife expert.
These two-headed snakes are "exceptionally rare", mainly because they do not live that long, said JD Kleopfer, Virginia's herpetologist, on Facebook.
The snake was captured and taken to a wildlife expert with experience in breeding and breeding vipers, officials said. Copperheads are venomous.
[Snake slithers out of car’s air vent as Virginia woman is driving]
But herpetologists have had the chance to review it and make some observations on the rare finding. A video shows it sliding along a rock.
In his Facebook post, Kleopfer said that the left head had the esophagus more dominant and that the right head had a more developed throat to eat.
Herpetological experts on the left side said they were "generally more active and sensitive to stimulants".
After conducting x-rays, the experts found that the two-headed snake had several other unique characteristics. The snake has two heads, but a heart and a set of lungs.
"According to the anatomy, it would be better for the good chef to eat, but this can be a challenge since the left head seems more dominant," experts said the Wildlife Center of Virginia in a statement.
Kleopfer said the authorities hope that the rare snake will eventually be donated to a zoo and put on display.
Rich Perry, who runs a wildlife removal business – Virginia Wildlife Management and Control in Powhatan, Va. – said he helped identify the snake. Perry said the woman had found the snake in her front yard near a bush and "had no idea what it was".
"She was afraid that it would go away and that she had children and pets, they were going to get some," Perry said. According to Perry, she picked him up in a plastic bin, took a picture of him and posted him in the service group of his neighborhood list, asking him if anyone could identify him.
Someone from this group saw the photo and sent it to Perry, who runs a 24-hour helpline that helps identify snakes. When he saw her, Perry said that he knew that it was a poisonous copper head.
"It was absolutely amazing," said Perry. He said that he's taking care of "hundreds of snakes every year" in his 40 years in the wildlife-removal business, but that he's never nothing seen of such.
"It was a chance thing. Just a phenomenon of nature, "said Perry.
The owner did not wish to be identified, according to Perry. On Monday, Perry said that at least six people, including the owner of a private museum, said they would pay for the two-headed snake because it is so rare.
A problem for two-headed snakes: they fight.
Gordon Burghardt, a herpetologist at the University of Tennessee, told National Geographic that two-headed snakes will often fight over which head swallows their prey.
Eating can take time for the snake and experts say it makes them vulnerable to predators.
Not to mention the difficulty of deciding the way forward. They can often not respond quickly when they are attacked.
In Louisiana, about a year ago, Tanee Janusz received a two-headed western snake found by a friend. A naturalist master, Janusz kept the snake and named the two heads Filo and Gumbo, according to Newsweek.
Janusz said she had to take extra precautions with the two-headed snake making sure her bowl of water was not too deep – otherwise, one head could lead to the other.
Experts said that two-headed snakes resembled Siamese twins in that this occurs when an embryo begins to split in two but stops. According to experts, it is possible to separate two-headed snakes, which can learn to be independent.
In the Eastern Region, the two-headed copperhead was not the only snake that wildlife specialists have treated recently. On Sunday night, they also helped pull out a copper head from a Richmond garage, where she was hiding behind a garbage can.
And in Montgomery County, a resident of Rockville was bitten by a Copperhead Saturday gardening. Emergency responders who helped treat the resident said that it was a "dry bite", which, according to snake specialists, is an injection of venom .
[Montgomery resident bitten by copperhead, but was in luck]
With heavy rains this spring and summer, snakes move and seek dry areas, experts said.
Earlier this month, a Maryland elementary school student found a snake in her office. It was a three foot black snake and was moved to a nearby wood.
And in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, a BC library was closed for more than two days after the discovery of several live snakes. Librarians said that snakes were probably snakes – a kind of skinny and harmless snake that is common in the region.
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