The 7-headed serpent changes the world.
If you are sᴛᴜᴘɪᴅ and new to the internet, you may have believed in them and argued with your friends about whether six-headed snakes exist or not. Those, on the other hand, are complete fabrications. All you need is an absolute snake photo and a basic understanding of Digital Photoshop to create as many snake heads as you want. Let me decode some snake ʜᴏᴀxᴇs and multi-headed snakes that have ꜰᴏᴏʟᴇᴅ all over the internet in recent years. “A 23-foot-long, three-headed black cobra was spotted on an Indian highway.”
Many people walk 60 kilometers from Bengaluru to see a seven-headed snake. Residents of Marigowdana Doddi village in Kanakapura saw the “seven-headed” snake near a temple. After the local news networks flashed the seven-headed snake and it went viral on social media, several people rushed to see the miracle. In Hɪɴᴅᴜ mythology, Shesha or Sheshanaga is depicted as a giant serpent floating coiled in space or ocean to form the bed on which the Lᴏʀᴅ Vɪsʜɴᴜ rests. Really? Polycephaly is a condition that occurs in animals, including humans, when they are born with more than one head. We have seen snakes with two leaders, but no snake with more than two heads has ever been seen in the world.
In general, polycephalic animals sᴜʀᴠɪᴠᴇ poorly (especially in the wild) and usually have a relatively short lifespan. However, cases of two-headed snakes sᴜʀᴠɪᴠɪɴɢ long enough to reproduce and live out average lifespans have been reported. Cases of bicephaly are uncommon enough, and examples of tricephaly (three-headedness) are rare. As far as we know, no cases of living animals born with more than three heads have ever been observed, which would make the seven-headed snake pictured above a headline phenomenon, if it were real. However, the image is just a digital manipulation of an earlier digital manipulation.
Can you count how many heads this ᴘᴏᴏʀ cobra has? Multi-headed animals resemble mythological creatures and exist in the real world as conjoined or parasitic twins. Creatures with two or more heads are not limited to mythology. Polycephaly is a condition in which an animal or human has more than one head as a result of a developmental ᴀʙɴᴏʀᴍᴀʟɪᴛʏ caused by a gene ᴍᴜᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ.