Two Headed Turtle

They say two heads are better than one, but this rare turtle doesn't seem to know whether it's coming or going - slowly, either way.

The two-headed red slider turtle has turned up at a reptile centre in Pennsylvania, where owners are amazed by its freak appearance. The unnamed curiosity has two heads on opposite sides of a single shell, as well as six legs and a combined tail.

A collector in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, passed the freak of nature to Big Al's Aquarium Supercenter in East Norriton. Jay Jacobi, the shop's exotic reptile manager, said: "The two heads seem to have their own thoughts, operating independently. "But sometimes they seem to put their two heads together and move in the same direction, feed together, walk together." Three names are in the running for the turtle.

These include Gemini, after the Zodian twins symbol, and Blinky, the name of a three-eyed, radioactive fish in an episode of The Simpsons. The store is also pondering calling the turtle Limerick, after a nuclear plant in the region, or Them. A two-headed tortoise was found in South Africa in 2003, with another turning in Dorset the following year.

Do You Know What A Liger Is ?

Do you know what a Liger is? It's a cross breed of a Lion male and Tiger female...


Read on......

The 10ft Liger who's still growing...

He looks like something from a prehistoric age or a fantastic creation from Hollywood . But Hercules is very much living flesh and blood - as he proves every time he opens his gigantic mouth to roar. Part lion, part tiger, he is not just a big cat but a huge one, standing 10ft tall on his back legs. Called a liger, in reference to his crossbreed parentage, he is the largest of all the cat species.

On a typical day he will devour 20lb of meat, usually beef or chicken, and is capable of eating 100lb at a single setting. At just three years old, Hercules already weighs half a ton.

He is the accidental result of two enormous big cats living close together at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida , and already dwarfs both his arents. "Ligers are not something we planned on having," said institute owner Dr Bhagavan Antle. "We have lions and tigers living together in large enclosures and at first we had no idea how well one of the lion boys was getting along with a tiger girl, then loo and behold we had a liger."

50mph runner... Not only that, but he likes to swim, a feat unheard of among water-fearing lions. In the wild it is virtually impossible for lions and tigers to mate. Not only are they enemies likely to kill one another, but most lions are in Africa and most tigers in Asia . But incredible though he is, Hercules is not unique. Ligers have been bred in captivity, deliberately and accidentally, since shortly before World War II.

Today there are believed to be a handful of ligers around the world and a similar number of tigons, the product of a tiger father and lion mother. Tigons are smaller than ligers and take on more physical characteristics of the tiger.

Look at the size of the head on this thing.. :o)