Saturday

Two-faced cat


Most people have heard of conjoined twins, or "Siamese twins," as they are sometimes called. Anyway, the same thing that happens to people sometimes happens to animals, and the result is conjoined twin animals.  Except that we don't hear about it as much because (1) conjoined animals might not even be able to get out of their mom and be born, or (2) they might get born, but they are born dead, or (3) if they are born alive, they usually can't survive for very long, especially not in the wild. The technical name for that is Disprosopus, or craniofacial duplication.


Meet Frank and Louie, a cat with not only two names, but also two faces on one head. Janus cats almost never survive, and most have birth defects, including a cleft palate, that makes it difficult for them to nurse and often causes them to slowly starve or get milk in their lungs and die of pneumonia.

But, for reasons unknown, Frank and Louie did not suffer from these common ailments and have made it into the 2012 Guinness World Records as the longest-surviving Janus cat.

Why Janus? Well, in ancient Roman mythology, Janus was a god with two faces.

That’s Frank on the left, and Louie on the right. Frank does the eating, while Louie “just kind of hangs out.” The eyes on the outside are the ones that see.





Source: http://piperbasenji.blogspot.com/2011/08/conjoined-animal-twins.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/two-faced-cat-turns-12-meet-frank-and-louie/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/karlstevens/meet-frank-and-louie-the-adorable-two-faced-cat



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