Researchers working at an aquarium in Australia have found the remains of a stillborn baby two headed ray. Being born with two heads is a rare birth defect, and this is the first case to be reported in Australia.
Researchers working at an aquarium in Australia have found the remains of a stillborn two headed ray.
A ray or shark being born with two heads is a rare birth defect, and this is the first case to be reported in Australia.
According to the co-author of the study Leonardo Guida from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia the cause of the defect “is unknown but is likely to have been a developmental problem and not a genetic mutation per se. Pollutants can potentially cause developmental issues; however we did not test for this nor were we able to determine the probable cause.”
The southern fiddler species of ray being studied were caught in the Port Phillip Bay to the south of Melbourne, where there is heavy shipping industry and development, including a recent dredging that stirred up sediment containing pollutants into the water.
Rays eat bottom feeding creatures that might have been exposed to these higher levels of pollution, but experts can’t pin the two headed birth defect entirely on environmental pollutants.
Recently, shark or ray embryos having deformities like one eye or two heads have been reported in other parts of the world.
