This Two-Headed Turtle Is Killing It on Facebook

Image via San Antonio Zoo

Two-headed animals may be uncommon, but they certainly are not unique. Everyone has seen photos of Deucy the Janus cat or something similar floating around the web. But a two-headed turtle, named Thelma and Louise, that was born at the San Antonio Zoo a month ago is getting the familiar internet love that mutant organisms tend to receive. Though it isn’t the first double-headed turtle to be photographed incessantly, it may be the first of its kind to become a trending social media figure.

The turtle has become so popular since its birth that a Facebook page called Thelmaandlouise Turtle was created and has already received over three thousand likes. It continues to grow by the hour. The page posts articles about various turtles around the web, as well as pictures of Thelma and Louise. The turtle embodies the mentality “pics or it didn’t happen.” 

The two-headed Texas Cooter turtle hatched on June 18th and both heads eat regularly and swim normally. San Antonio spokeswoman Debbie Rios-Vanskike even said that the heads are getting along. Like other bicephalics, Thelma and Louise were meant to be twins but a pre-hatch mutation yielded a share body. 

While most Janus-headed species are discovered in reptiles like snakes and turtles, the earliest polycephalic discovery was the dual-domed Hyphalosaurus lingyuanensis​ (“submerged lizard”) found that dates to 122 million years ago, during the Cretaceous. The fossil was unearthed in northeastern China in 2007.

But even that specimen didn’t strike it big on the social media stage. Thelma and Louis is a testament to the idea that modern humans will turn any oddity into a spectacle in a modern incarnation of the circus-age freak show, and then will like, retweet, and generally share the hell out of it.