Last March, park rangers found a three-eyed python on a highway in northern Australia. This condition is extremely rare, even unprecedented, according to several experts.
We’ve known about snakes with two heads, one eye, or even no eyes… But, as far as any expert can remember, a three-eyed snake is unheard of. The “mutant” specimen, nicknamed “Monty Python,” was found at the end of March by rangers from the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission (NTPWC) on a highway near Humpty Doo, a small Australian town about 40 km southeast of Darwin. The NTPWC has just shared photos of the snake on Facebook, which only survived a few weeks after being found (its malformation preventing it from feeding properly).
Experts say it’s a 40cm-long carpet python ( Morelia spilota ) with a third eye on its forehead, a mutation thought to be naturally occurring. ” This condition is extremely rare ,” said David Penning, an assistant professor of biology at Missouri Southern State University (USA), when contacted by Live Science . “Until today, I’d never seen anything like it.” The carpet python, native to Australia and New Guinea , is non-venomous and can reach up to 3 metres in length as an adult. But given its small size, this one was a juvenile, about two months old, explains the NTPWC.
Unable to find an explanation for the strange deformity, the rangers performed a CT scan on the snake, which revealed not two separate heads forged together—as experts suspected—but “ a single skull with a third eye socket and three functional eyes ,” the NTPWC said, adding that the deformity likely appeared early in the snake’s embryonic development, making it likely a “ natural occurrence unrelated to environmental factors ” such as pollution.
Common malformations
Generally speaking, malformations are quite common in reptiles (albinism being one of the most common). These abnormalities develop during the embryonic stage and can be genetic or due to adverse environmental factors. ” Every baby has some kind of mutation – only this one is particularly striking ,” Professor Brian Fry of the University of Queensland told the BBC .
