Indian Myth has told us tales of snakes with several heads, like Kalia which was taught a lesson by Lord Krishna after he performed an enchanting dance on the head of the evil. But is that all only myth? Why don't we see a many headed snake in real life?

Many parts of mythology, regardless of which country or religion it belongs to, are allegories often exaggerated to mythical proportions but still not completely detached from the truth. A multiple headed snake may not have been real but there were snakes with two heads spotted in nature.

One such occurrence was documented in the University of Central Florida by a Herpetologist and a Biologist, Daniel Parker. He noticed that one of hatchlings the eggs of a Honduran Milk Snake had a few extremely interesting features. It had two heads and was devoid of the pigmentation in the skin.

The condition of having two heads is called bicephalism. The reason why you don't see it is because it happens only to one in over ten thousand snakes. Unlike other species of animals which were spotted to have two heads, Snakes have an exceptionally better rate of survival in captivity.

Since the snake has two brains that function independently and often antagonistically to the other, it makes survival in the wild almost impossible. Added to that this snake is an albino, which makes it an easy prey to be spotted in the wild.

A normal Milk Snake has bright orange to red skin with black bands on the snake and are non-poisonous. The albinos have the same dark orange skin but the lack of pigmentation makes the black bands appear white. The Milk Snake should not however be confused with the similar looking yet greatly deadly coral snake. The coral snake has yellow bands instead of the black ones.

Here is a recent video of the same snake showing two fully independent heads drinking water from an artificial pond of water. Notice that the snake has difficulty choosing which way to go at times.  One head gradually becomes the dominant head.

(AW- Anil)