A two-headed stillborn whitetail deer fawn? Yes, it’s true. A Minnesota mushroom hunter stumbled across the discovery in the southeast corner of the state.
“It’s amazing and extremely rare,” said Gino D’Angelo, D’Angelo, assistant professor of deer ecology and management at University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. “We can’t even estimate the rarity of this. Of the tens of millions of fawns born annually in the U.S., there are probably abnormalities happening in the wild we don’t even know about.”
D’Angelo conducted a necropsy and found the fawns were both female and shared the same body but had different necks and heads. They also shared the same liver but had two hearts.
The researcher recently published the results of his findings in the science journal American Midland Naturalist.
A Missouri man, also seeking mushrooms earlier in 2018, came across a large elk skull and antlers.
(Photo source: University of Georgia)