This photograph has been doing the rounds on social media for the last few months, but what's really going on?
A Greek doctor snapped this amazing image during a caesarian section.
Unusually, the amniotic sac remained intact as the birth progressed.
Typically it breaks, but this time it did not -leading to the baby not
even being aware it had been born. Until the amniotic sac breaks, the
baby will continue to receive oxygen and nutrients from the placenta.
This baby was born safe and healthy.
Frank and Louie is a cat who was born with two faces, so he has two names. Does that mean he has 18 lives?
It almost seems so now that he has earned a spot as the longest lived
Janus cat in the new edition of the Guinness World Records (Guinness has
dropped the word “book” from the name in this digital age). The cat's
owner is a Worcester woman named Marty Stevens who has owned Frank and
Louie since a local breeder brought him into Tufts Veterinary Clinic to
be euthanized when he was a day old. Marty was a veterinary nurse at
Tufts at the time and offered to take him home.
The prognosis, however, was not good. Janus cats, named after
the Roman god with two faces, are extremely rare and seldom live more
than a few days after being born. Often they die within hours. But under
Marty's dedicated care Frank and Louie flourished. He turned 12 years
old on Sept. 8.
Frank and Louie has two mouths, two noses and two normal eyes
with one larger non-functioning eye in the center. “That was the first
eye to open up when he was two days old so I had a little Cyclops for a
while,” Marty said. That's not an endearing image, and, as often happens
with animals and even people who are not exactly like everyone else,
Frank and Louie often draws a shocked reaction from onlookers. But that
first impression quickly fades.
“He's just so affectionate and sweet he usually wins people over,” Marty said.
The cat has two faces, but only one head and brain, so the faces
react in unison and not as separate entities. Also, two faces doesn't
mean two cans of cat food every morning. The cat's right side — or
Frank's side — is connected to an esophagus while Louie's isn't, so
Frank eats for two.
If you look at the cat from the left he looks completely normal.
Look at him from the right and he does as well. It is only when you
look straight at him that you can see how unusual he is — so different
he attracted worldwide attention after a local news story and video
about him was picked up internationally about six years ago. One of
those articles captured the attention of British cryptozoologist and
science writer Karl Shuker, whose books include “From Flying Toads to
Snakes with Wings: In Search of Mysterious Beasts, Bizarre Creatures and
Mystery Animals” and “Mystery Cats of the World.”
Mr. Shuker also happens to be the life sciences consultant for
Guinness and it was he who submitted details of Frank and Louie for
inclusion in the 2012 edition as the world's longest surviving Janus
cat. It is a term, he said in an email to the Telegram, that he coined
several years previously in relation to cats born with diprosopia, or
two faces on a single head. Though rare, it is a phenomenon that occurs
in many species, Mr. Shuker says, including humans. Mr. Shuker said he
was thrilled to learn the cat was still alive when Marty tracked him
down by email after finding his blog. She wanted to tell him that the cat had been included in the 2012 Guinness edition.
She was surprised to learn it was he who submitted the cat's information.
The Guinness entry on Frank and Louie says the cat lives in
Millbury, Ohio, and had reached the age of six by 2006, the last year
for which Mr. Shuker could find press accounts. The cat and Marty
actually lived in Millbury before moving to Worcester.
Even in 2006, Frank and Louie was the world's longest living Janus cat.
As a newborn kitten the size of a hamster, he wasn't expected to
live 12 days let alone 12 years. Because he had to be fed every two
hours, Marty carried him in a shoebox everywhere she went, including
work, feeding him with a special veterinary kitten formula. She had to
put a tube down into his stomach and injected the formula with a
syringe. Veterinarians advised her not to get her hopes up.
“But every day he got stronger,” Marty said. “He just kept beating the odds.”
There wasn't a special celebration Sept. 8 because cats, after
all, aren't exactly party animals. “I just kept calling him ‘birthday
boy' all day,” Marty said.
