By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
It’s a story line straight from “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
But in this case, the students of biology teacher Greg Zeman – especially Burlington High School freshman Austin Squires – definitely believe.
In February, a two-headed calf was born at Whitley Farms, where Squires lives and works. The animal was humanely euthanized by a veterinarian, but the animal was brought into BHS to be studied by Katie Hagemann’s small and domestic animals class, and by Zeman and his students.
The calf has been taken to a taxidermist, and it will come back to BHS for display.
“It is very crazy,” said Zeman, who said the animal suffered from a rare deformity called polyencepholy – two heads on one body.
“To have something like this come across as a teaching tool, it’s really amazing,” he said.
Zeman brought the animal in after discussing a unit on conjoined twins, and genetics.
“It was bizarre,” he said. “It was the most crazy thing I’ve ever seen. We talk about that in our genetics unit, but to actually see something like that, it’s amazing.”
Squires said the animal was born from a 60-70 head herd, all of which were artificially inseminated. When the head got stuck during birth, he and other farm staff knew something was wrong.
“It should normally slide right out,” Squires said. When the calf came out, though, there was surprise.
“It was just a normal calf, besides the two heads,” Squires said.
Zeman believes that the calf should have been twins, but did not finish dividing properly.
Squires said living on the farm gives him a unique perspective on education.
“It’s cool. A learning experience,” said the freshman. “You learn something new every day.”
And for Zeman, who has a classroom with a 27-year-old tarantula, two large bullfrogs and snake (among fish and turtles), this incident showed him he can continue learning.
“To have it in a mammal like this, it’s really one in a million,” Zeman said.
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