Two-headed ray discovered by Monash University researcher in Melbourne

AN Australian researcher has discovered a ray with two heads - the first two-hedaed ray or shark to be found in the country and one of few in the world.

The two-headed ray discovered by an Australian researcher.

AN Australian researcher has discovered a ray with two heads - the first two-headed ray or shark to be found in the country and one of few in the world.

Leonardo Guida, a doctoral student at Monash University in Melbourne, made the find while caring for pregnant rays in an aquarium.

He said he was taking notes on baby rays born in April this year when an "oddly shaped, pale object in the water'' stood out.

It turned out to be a stillborn ray - with two heads - a defect that arises when the neural tube (like a spinal cord) in a single fertilised egg is duplicated. It can also happen when an embryo begins to divide into two to form twins, but is stopped prematurely.

The researchers caught the southern fiddler rays by hand while scuba diving in Swan Bay, a semi-enclosed section of Port Phillip Bay south of Melbourne, home to heavy ship traffic that has recently undergone extensive dredging.

This developed, combined with the fact that rays eat bottom-dwelling creatures, may have exposed these animals to significant levels of pollutants.

But whether or not they could've caused this birth defect is unknown, the researcher noted.

For more see Livescience

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