Carp in the state of the Northern Territory, Australia, have three eyes that function normally but still have difficulty feeding.
Forest protection officials have found a three-eyed python near the town of Darwin in the Northern Territory, Australia. The strange snake was shared yesterday on Facebook by the Northern Territory Wildlife and Parks Authority.
The python belongs to the carpet python. This species of python can be 2-4m in length and is popular in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. The immature three-eyed python, about three months old and only about 40 cm long. He is nicknamed Monty, was discovered in late March 2019 but died last week.
“It is remarkable that he can survive so long in the wild with a distorted form. He struggled to feed himself before he died last week,” said Ray Chatto, a ranger at the agency. Parks and wildlife of the Northern Territory, shared. The corpse was donated to the Commonwealth of Darwin Scientific and Industrial Research Foundation.
Deformities of the skull make the python extremely special. The third eye is functioning properly and the team must take x-rays to understand its body structure. The results revealed that the python’s odd shape was not due to the presence of two attached heads as previously speculated, but the fact that the skull had an additional orbit.
“The eye is more likely to form very early in the embryonic stage. This is certainly not due to the impact of environmental factors but occurs naturally through the relatively common deformation of reptiles,” A wildlife official and of the parks of the Northern Territory said.
