The two-headed turtle Janus will turn 23 in a few days: an extraordinary milestone for this specimen
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himThe two-headed tortoise Janus will turn 23 in a few days: an extraordinary milestone for this specimen of tortoise suffering from policephaly, given that the previous record was just four years old. As we know, this turtle lives in the Natural History Museum of Geneva in Switzerland, because in the wild it could not survive for long since it cannot retract its two heads in the carapace and would end up being preyed upon.
Janus, named after the two-faced Greek god, was born in 1997 from an egg kept in the museum's incubator. The tortoise has policephaly, a malformation linked to a failure to separate homozygous twins during development and therefore needs countless treatments. For example, every week she has to take an ultraviolet ray bath for vitamin D, feeds on salads and tomatoes, has no sexual activity and is washed only with hot water as she cannot dive because she would drown. The nice thing is that each head has its own character, one head loves spinach and hates endive. The other, on the other hand, refuses spinach and eagerly rushes to the endive.
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So many difficulties that do not prevent Janus from living peacefully, all clearly thanks to the support of the Museum. These days, in view of his birthday, September 3, this tortoise will have a new home, more spacious and brighter. The turtle belongs to the Testudo graeca species which is 'almost threatened' on the IUCN Red List, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But the good news comes from the museum: Janus will never end up at the zoo.
Fonte: EN24
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