The specimen – a world first for a bull shark – was a single fish with two heads and not conjoined twins, experts from Michigan State University confirmed.
It has two heads, hearts and stomachs, with the remainder of its body joined at the bank to form a single tail.
‘This is certainly one of those interesting and rarely detected phenomena,’ said Prof Michael Wagner, the study’s co-author.
‘It’s good that we have this documented as part of the world’s natural history.’
The two-headed wonder was discovered when a fisherman in the Florida Keys caught its mother and gutted her in April 2011.
Unlike Blinky, the three-eyed fish in The Simpsons, the shark’s deformity is the result of the embryo failing to split into two separate organisms – and not nuclear dumping.
‘Halfway through the process of forming twins, the embryo stops dividing,’ Prof Wagner added.
But the fetus and its stunted body would not have survived for long in the ocean.
‘When you’re a predator that needs to move fast to catch other fast-moving fish … that’d be nearly impossible with this mutation,’ he said.
The study was published online in the Journal of Fish Biology.
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