My first ever deformed chick. Pics may be disturbing!!!

[spacecowgirl]

Seriously, definitely keep it. It is absolutely fascinating. I can't stop staring at that middle eye with the double irises (?) pupils (?)...I've never seen anything like it, and I have seen lots of crazy stuff..

Have you ever seen that show "Oddities"? They really do pay good money for deformations like that.

 

[abbylane35]

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I agree...that show is totally gross sometimes, but this poor little guy would fit right in there!

I grew up on a dairy farm, and we once had a calf that was born with one head, but two noses/mouths...the little guy didn't last long. Such a sad thing

 

[jenlynn4]

I agree with the others that say to try to preserve it. It is very interresting in a creepy sort of way but also seems like it could be educational too. And yes there are many ppl that pay good money for wierd stuff.

 

[WillowTreeFarm]

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Freezer would be the best at preserving... even in formaldehyde (or whatever concoction it is now) it will decompose eventually. Mammoths have been found perfectly preserved, frozen in the russia tundra

 

[ProudNewChickenMommy86]

It Looks Like Twins That Didn't Separate All The Way. Poor Thing. Call Ripleys. They Like That Kinda Stuff.

 

[NonnasBabies]

It's just so sad but intresting!! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Gypsy07]

Wow. Very interesting photos. I'm rather glad I've never found anything like this inside an egg yet! Thanks for posting.

Sad, but definitely a good thing that it didn't survive. I agree that it would be good to preserve it, if you can...

 

[Animalian]

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I learned about this at school in biology. I also think it was a single bird (not to be twins) that 'malfunctioned' in development. Problems with the 'sonic hedgehog' (no joke!) gene controls where and how evenly parts of the body form. If it's overactive you can get two faces, underactive you get a cyclops. Also most of the time, in any animal the embryo simply doesn't survive because its body layout is completely disordered. It happens in many species, including humans.

Look up the sonic hedgehog gene if you want more info.

 

[Animalian]

found this which might interest you, scientists have actually made this happen in chicks.I was wrong, its a protein, not a gene.

"Diprosopus and Sonic Hedgehog

Since several hundred thousand (possibly several million) separate proteins are involved in the making of a complex life form, biologists often give them whimsical names in order to keep them straight. "Sonic hedgehog" was the name given in the 1980s to the protein, found only in embryos, which is responsible for establishing the body's midline. A sonic hedgehog deficiency was found to be the cause of cyclopia - a gruesome, fatal birth defect in which both eyes are contained within the same socket, giving the appearance of the legendary Greek Cyclops. Cyclopia is a symptom of holoprosencephaly, literally "whole forebrain", meaning that the brain is not divided into hemispheres like a normal brain, but is rather a single lump of tissue. Since the hemispheric division of the brain - produced by the sonic hedgehog protein - is the basis for the midline, embryos without divided brains are confused, so to speak, about how far apart their eyes need to be. Sonic hedgehog is the reason most of us have two eye sockets, set a reasonable distance apart, with a symmetrical nose in between them. A "cyclops" has only one eye socket and no nose.

Though less understood than cyclopia, sirenomelia (literally "mermaid limbs" - a fatal fusion of the lower limbs into a single, flipper-like extremity) is believed to be another defect caused by sonic hedgehog deficiency.

What, then, is the outcome when too much sonic hedgehog is introduced into a developing embryo? Scientists have produced this scenario artificially by dousing chicken embryos with an abnormally large dose of the protein. The result is that many of the chicks are born with their eyes very far apart. Some even have two beaks. This would suggest that duplication of the facial features may in fact be caused by an overdose of sonic hedgehog - not by incomplete twinning, as is frequently believed."

 

[blefky]

Thanks for the research, Animalian. Really interesting.