Michigan State University just released a new, kind of grotesque image of the two-headed bull shark we told you about yesterday.
The shark was caught while still in its mother by a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico. It died soon after being removed from her uterus, and probably had little to no chance of surviving in the wild.
It's siblings were all normal and were released into the Gulf.
It has two distinct heads, hearts, and stomachs with the remainder of the body joining together in back half of the animal to form a single tail.
The researchers said in the paper, published in the Journal Of Fish Biology, that the two-headed feature could have been caused by environmental pollution, but in a statement from Michigan State University, study researcher Michael Wagner said:
"This is certainly one of those interesting and rarely detected phenomena," he says. "It’s good that we have this documented as part of the world’s natural history, but we’d certainly have to find many more before we could draw any conclusions about what caused this."
"Given the timing of the shark’s discovery with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I could see how some people may want to jump to conclusions," Wagner says. "Making that leap is unwarranted. We simply have no evidence to support that cause or any other."
Here's the picture:
And here's the MRI scan of the bull shark:
SEE ALSO: These Rare Sharks Are Some Of The Weirdest Animals On Earth