Nature & Environment

Conjoined bat twins discovered in rainforest

By T.K. Randall
July 28, 2017

Image: Amazon Rainforest in Tena, Ecuador
Credit: Jay / CC BY 2.0 (adapted) Discovered in 2001 underneath a mango tree in southeastern Brazil, the bizarre specimen, which was donated to a university in Rio de Janeiro, is only the third example of conjoined bat twins ever found.

"We believe the mother of these twins was roosting in this tree when she gave birth," wrote Marcelo Nogueira from the State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro.

This two-headed bat discovered in Brazil cannot be unseen https://t.co/aoL7knYLn3

— The Independent (@Independent) July 28, 2017

Conjoined twins are very rare in general, effecting only one in every 200,000 births in the US.

In the animal kingdom, low survival rates make such discoveries even rarer still.

"It is our hope that cases like this will encourage more studies on bat embryology, an open and fascinating field of research that can largely benefit from material already available in scientific collections," Nogueira wrote.

Source: National Geograhpic

Tags: Conjoined, Twins, Bats