Fisherman nets rare two-headed shark, decides to throw it back

A commercial fisherman in India discovered a rare surprise Friday when he hauled up his net: a two-headed baby shark.

The shark, caught by Nitin Patil off the village of Satpai in Palghar, measured only six inches and was tossed back after the fisherman took photographs.

“We do not eat such small fish, especially sharks, so I thought it was strange but decided to throw it anyway,” Patil told the Hindustan Times.

The news website quotes another fisherman as saying, “We have never seen anything like this before.”

It’s believed to be the first documentation of a two-headed shark caught off the Indian state of Maharashtra, and scientists wish Patil would have kept the specimen.

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Biologists with the Indian Council for Agricultural Research – Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute said the fetus was that of either a spadenose shark or sharpnose shark, which inhabit the tropical Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean.

“Both are viviparous , and are common in Maharashtra waters,” Dr. Akhilesh KV, CMFRI scientist, told The Hindustan Times.

“These are dicephalic. This phenomenon is reported in several animal species including sharks, possibly due to mutation or any other embryonic malformation, disorders, and these are very rare reports. Similar cases are reported elsewhere outside the northern Indian Ocean. These materials should be preserved out of scientific interest.”

The Hindustan Times notes that a two-headed milk shark was caught off Gujarat in 1964, and a two-headed spadenose shark was caught off Karwar in 1991.

–Images courtesy of Nitin Patil and Umesh Palekar