SAM Daily Times

Two-faced cat sets record as oldest living 'Janus' cat

Born in 1999, Frank and Louie , the two faced cat in Massachusetts has set a world record of  oldest living "Janus cat" ,a name  coined by British zoologist Dr. Karl Shuker, based on the two-faced Roman god of transitions, gates and doorways.

Frank and Louie has a case of craniofacial duplication, an extremely rare congenital condition resulting from a protein with the odd name of sonic hedgehog homolog (SHH).
The disorder, also known as diprosopia, can cause part or all of an individual's face to be duplicated on its head. It has been recorded multiple times in the domestic cat (Felis catus), but few of the resulting two-faced kittens survive into adulthood.

The cat has one brain, so both faces act in unison. Two of his eyes -- the outermost ones -- are normal, while the middle eye is larger but doesn't function.

Louie and Frank takes it's feed from Frank's mouth as this is the one connected to its esophagus.


Source:The News