14 DAY TRIAL // This past June 28, Justin Arnold from Seminole Heights, Florida, posted the photo above on Facebook. The photo has since been shared nearly 3,500 times, and has even made it on the cover of several publications.
In the photo's description on Facebook, Justin Arnold explains that he came across this alleged two-headed alligator while walking his dog over the weekend. Besides, he claims several other people also spotted the odd creature.
“I was walking my dog yesterday and noticed a few people gathered by the Hillsborough river in Seminole Heights. When I went closer I was amazed to see this two headed alligator,” Justin writes on Facebook.
“According to Florida Fish and Game it has been reported by several people and they explained it as a failed separation of monozygotic twins and that it is common in reptiles,” he goes on to argue.
While it is very much true that it can sometimes happen that twin animals fail to separate completely, the fact remains that polycephaly, i.e. having more than one head, is not as common as Justin Arnold would have people believe it is.
On the contrary, this phenomenon is fairly rare, and it almost never happens for it to be documented in the wild. This is because two-headed animals that have nobody to look after them more often than not die long before anybody has a chance to lay eyes on them.
Hence, it should not come as a surprise that some of the folks who have had the chance to have a look at Justin Arnold's photo of the two-headed alligator are pretty convinced that the picture is no more and no less than a hoax.
More so given the fact that one of the animal's rear legs appears to be hovering over the ground, as if the creature was a taxidermy mount, and not an actual living and breathing alligator, and the fact that the oddity appears to have left no tracks behind it when it emerged from the water.
Interestingly enough, it turns out that Justin Arnold also runs a blog on Tumblr, which he uses to introduce the world to all sorts of weird creatures that, at a closer look, are revealed as hoaxes.
Of these creatures, the most peculiar is a fish with fur. As explained by Justin, “It is believed that the great depth and extreme penetrating coldness of the water in which these fish live has caused them to grow their dense coat of fur.”
Needless to say, fish do not grow fur, regardless of how cold the environment they live in might be. Consequently, chances are that the two-headed alligator this man claims to have photographed in Florida is also a hoax.