Did the Greeks get their idea for a multi-headed
monster from nature itself?
Maybe they saw something that looked
a lot like what you're about to see in this next video.
September 2020, Jeannie Wilson of Taylorsville, North Carolina
is cleaning up after game night with family and friends.
She heads into her sunroom where she comes
across a modern day monster.
She records this video of a foot-long snake
slithering around the bottom of a five gallon
container with two heads.
Based on the video, the snake's heads appear to be working
independently of each other.
Jeannie was nearly shocked out of her skin.
JEANNIE WILSON: I spotted him in the corner of the sunroom.
I thought somebody had stepped on his head and mashed it.
And I looked really close and I said, you've got two heads.
And it's like, wow.
For a two-headed snake to make it that long out in the wild
is amazing.
NARRATOR: Field researcher Cliff Barackman
believes that animals like this two-headed serpent
may have been the original inspiration
for many of the world's most fearsome mythical monsters.
Probably the only thing scarier than a snake
might be a two-headed snake.
If we look back into ancient times,
you can find the stories of multi-headed animals
like the multi-headed dog, Cerberus,
that guarded the gates of hell, or the Hydra,
the mini-headed snake monster.
And I think that behind these sorts of stories
is always a grain of truth.
NARRATOR: Field researcher Ken Gerhard
lays out a more sinister idea.
Warning, these images could be disturbing.
KEN GERHARD: I'm thinking of a Russian scientist who
is able to successfully attach the head
of a dog to another dog.
NARRATOR: That would be Dr. Vladimir Demikhov,
a pioneering Russian surgeon who transplanted
one dog's head onto the neck of another dog back in 1968.
The conjoined animals survived for 38 days.
KEN GERHARD: So we can't rule out the possibility
that this two-headed snake could be the result of a similar type
of experimentation.
Sadly, about 3/4 of all conjoined twins die before,
during, or soon after birth.
So how did the snake get this way?
And how did it survive?
Is this fantastic beast unnaturally lucky
or is it a bit too fantastic?
First, we brought the video to Roxy Furman
to assess the authenticity.
I've seen conjoined twins before
of various different other species.
But my initial instinct was, is this head real or not?
And up until kind of halfway through,
this second head is not kind of using its tongue
to smell the environment.
But then there was a point where the second head, it's tongue
comes out.
And at this point, you can see it's kind
of wanting to move in a different direction, which then
made me think this is real.
NARRATOR: Furman says these two headed creatures are
examples of a natural but mysterious
mutation called polycephaly.
There's a lot that we still don't understand
about conjoined twins.
If there are two heads both, which
have their own consciousness, then
who kind of overrides the control of the body
or whether they communicate with one another as to individuals
would?
NARRATOR: Furman refutes the idea
that this multi-headed snake could
be the product of human experimentation
similar to that of Soviet scientists in the 1950s.
ROXY FURMAN: There's no indication of recent surgery.
There's no stitches or suture marks.
NARRATOR: So it's a real, natural-born snake.
But what explains its mutation and its survival?
It seems to be doing pretty well.
This is unique because we don't often see animals
with two heads that seem to be healthy because they don't
tend to survive in the wild.
NARRATOR: And while Conger is positive the snake isn't
some bizarre experiment, she says the genetic mutation
we see here may still have been caused by humans, just
not intentionally.
Amphibians and reptiles like snakes
are actually just really prone to mutation.
And a lot of this has to do with environmental pollution.
It's been shown that there's a number
of pollutants that can actually cause
malformations in wildlife.
And we're seeing this increasingly today.
So our verdict--
this snake was an example of polycephaly quite
possibly caused by pollution.
What became of it is this story's happy ending.
Jeannie gave the snake to a friend, and here's his update.
He says he named the serpent Double Trouble,
and says he's alive and well.
Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 2020.
Local media reports strange sightings of bats
that can swim and run on land.
One provocative online headline reads,
Mysterious Humanoid Bats Reported
in Argentina and in China.
And here is their proof.
These humanoid-looking bat-like creatures appear
to be swimming in a local lake.
Take a closer look.
What in the world can they be?
6,000 miles away, another freakish video of more mystery
bats, this time from China.
Watch as this one flops on the ground making
unsettling vocalizations.
[bat screeching]
KEN GERHARD: It's flopping around.
It's screeching.
It's acting erratically.
It's actually kind of disturbing.
So it's fairly obvious why someone would immediately
look at this and think this is some kind of really strange,
weird looking mutant bat.
NARRATOR: Ambitious scientists have tried to create
custom hybrid species before.
Perhaps most famously, the Soviet zoologist Ilya Ivanov
tried to cross an ape and a human back in the 1920s
without success.
Are these swimming bats?
The result of some recent genetic project?
Even normal bats have a complex relationship with humans.
Research suggests some viruses like measles
and mumps originated in bats.
But are the animals in these videos
really some kind of mutant?
We turn to our analysts.
SHEA CONGER: I can see how this would
look particularly mysterious.
NARRATOR: Marine biologist Dr. Shea
Conger says the theories about these creatures run the gamut.
SHEA CONGER: There's some conjecture online
that this animal might be the mix between a bat
and something like a frog.
NARRATOR: But she doesn't believe that kind
of cross-breeding is possible.
SHEA CONGER: To be able to mix two species that
are so different would be highly unlikely
and wouldn't result in something that would actually be alive.
NARRATOR: So if this is not a mutant, what is it?
Wildlife biologist Lucy Eckersley first focuses
on the video out of China.
LUCY ECKERSLEY: I don't think that this is even a bat.
I think it's another type of mammal, something
that's called a colugo.
Colugos are a type of gliding mammal that is sometimes
also called gliding lemurs.
They can reach up to 200 feet using this amazing area that's
called the patagium, that fold of skin
that reaches from their forelimbs
down to their hind limbs.
NARRATOR: That might explain the Chinese video.
But what about these strange things in the water in Buenos
Aires?
I don't think that these are colugos.
I think what we're actually seeing
is a marine animal called a sea hare
that we can see around the world and can grow up to 15 inches
long.
Both of these animals, I understand why people might
think that these are mutant varieties of bats living
underwater or looking like a strange animal
screeching on the ground.
But what I can tell by looking at their anatomy,
that what we have is a colugo and sea hares.
Again, it's important to know that many species can
share common characteristics and affinities.
But people, frogs, and bats have different DNA
and can't be crossbred.
At least not yet.
Our verdict?
Colugos and sea hares.
It's a breezy February afternoon in Charleston, South Carolina.
Erika Constantine is walking her dog, River, on a local beach
when she sees something lying on the sand.
Take a good look.
It appears to be the grisly remains of a strange creature.
Mostly rotting bones, what could have been legs or flippers,
razor sharp teeth, and no eyes.
Beyond that, Erika can only wonder.
I mean, what would you think?
I was like holy [bleep].
I just found something weird.
NARRATOR: A theory emerges that the creature
had escaped from a facility on a nearby island.
It's called Morgan Island.
But it has a nickname, Monkey Island.
MJ BANIAS: So in the 1970s, the United States government
imported thousands of rhesus monkeys from Puerto Rico
and placed them onto the island.
NARRATOR: The monkeys were released into the wild to breed
and occasionally rounded up to be test subjects at a US
government lab, a lab that was trying to develop
cures for various diseases.
But nearby residents said there was more to it.
MJ BANIAS: Locals in the town have this belief that the lab
is the site of some pretty intense biological weapons
testing that the government might
be engaging in genetic experiments
to mutate these monkeys.
NARRATOR: Decades later, there are 4,000 monkeys there.
And reportedly, they display strange behavior
like burial rituals for their dead as if they've evolved.
A few years back, one even turned up in someone's yard
seven miles away.
Of course when anything does wash up on shore,
you're going to have people automatically
say it must be from this island that the government owns.
And it's a big secret.
No one's allowed to visit.
It's kind of a mysterious place.
So what is going on in South Carolina?
Our rule here is to keep an open mind
while taking a hard, honest look at these videos.
So we pulled in two top biologists
to analyze the footage, and this is what they turned out.
Dr. Shea Conger is a marine biologist.
The first thing she did was try to figure
out if it really was a monkey.
SHEA CONGER: This animal has the skeletal structure
of a primate.
There is a population of several thousand
of these animals in a nearby location on Morgan Island.
It's not totally implausible that one could
wash up on a beach nearby.
NARRATOR: Conger uses something called dentition analysis,
the study of the teeth.
Look closely at the premolars and molars in back.
SHEA CONGER: You can see that there's
a triangular shape to these.
If this were a primate, we would expect that these
would be more square shaped.
That's what leads me to deduce that this
is maybe not a primate.
NARRATOR: So even though the skeleton looks like a monkey,
the teeth say it's something else.
A seal or sea lion seems logical.
But Conger says those bones mean only one thing--
legs, not flippers.
Conger has another theory.
SHEA CONGER: This, as a whole, looks
very much to me like a small carnivorous mammal.
NARRATOR: That means it could be a raccoon or a coyote.
But when our other expert, wildlife biologist Lucy
Eckersley, focuses on the skull, she suggests it could
be something way more exotic.
LUCY ECKERSLEY: So this could be something really interesting.
It could be a big cat species, maybe something like a leopard.
NARRATOR: That may sound like a stretch.
But Eckersley says the cheekbone might be
feline because of its flatness.
LUCY ECKERSLEY: Looking at the teeth and the zygomatics,
the cheekbones, that look like it could be mummified
remains of a leopard that have been
swept up in a weather event and moved
somewhere else down the coast.
NARRATOR: But what is a leopard, an animal
native to Africa in Asia, doing on a beach in South Carolina?
One theory?
It fell off a boat.
It's happened before.
Decades ago, a giraffe reportedly
drowned in the waters near Brooklyn, New York
while trying to escape from a ship heading to a zoo.
Another possibility, looking at the Atlantic currents,
a dead leopard may have floated up from one of those wildlife
ranches in Florida.
But after further review, Eckersley agrees with Conger.
Because of a pronounced snout, it's more likely to be
something like a coyote.
To know for sure, we'd need a DNA test.
But Erika says the remains of the creature
were destroyed by animal control.
MJ BANIAS: That's only going to add to the conspiratorial fire.
People are automatically going to go to--
this must be a cover up.
OK, folks.
So is it proof or not?
Well, it's not a mutant monkey or a seal.
That initial take on the cheekbone
had us thinking leopard.
But our verdict, coyote.
As they say, you never know what the tide will bring in.
It's March 2020, a hot and humid day in the Brazilian Amazon.
Local fishermen are crossing the Xingu River when they encounter
an extraordinary sight.
At first, it almost looks like waves or ripples.
But let's have a closer look.
It's some kind of gigantic snake.
This thing is nightmarish.
And by one estimate, it's 50 feet long.
Field researcher Ken Gerhard says it immediately reminds him
of the legendary river serpent known
as Boiuna, a gigantic mythical deity of South America.
KEN GERHARD: It's described as being an enormous black snake
or serpent.
And it's considered to be a guardian of sorts,
that it actually stands guard at certain sacred places.
NARRATOR: But huge snakes aren't just part of folklore.
They're actually part of the Amazonian fossil record.
This is the prehistoric predator a Titanoboa,
which measured more than 40 feet long.
Its midsection as wide as a man's waist.
It weighed over a ton and could stay underwater
for as long as 45 minutes.
This thing did in fact exist and in this kind of habitat.
Who's to say that they're all gone?
NARRATOR: The fossil record shows that Titanoboa went
extinct millions of years ago.
But field researcher Cliff Barackman
notes that sometimes, allegedly extinct
species turn up alive and well.
Example, the famous coelacanth fish.
CLIFF BARACKMAN: The coelacanth fish
was thought to be extinct for millions of years,
like 20 million years, until it was
discovered in the 1930s swimming around
in the oceans off of Indonesia.
So we should expect to be discovering animals that
were either thought to be extinct
or are related to extinct animals.
Wow.
Is the creature in the video some kind of relic species,
some extremely large cousin of the Titanoboa
that somehow survived?
And when the Amazonian tribes people described Boiuna,
the serpent river god, could they really have been
talking about something real?
We turn to our experts.
I mean, this is extraordinary.
NARRATOR: Wildlife biologist Lucy Eckersley
finds the video remarkable.
It could be that this snake is a living relic of Titanoboa,
something that could trace its lineage back
to that enormous animal.
NARRATOR: But she thinks the serpent might
be too big to be believed.
I think that this is an incredible sighting
of an enormous snake.
I think that this video has been stretched
and manipulated to make it look even more
enormous than it really was.
NARRATOR: So we head back to forensic video
analyst, Michael Primeau, to authenticate the footage.
MICHAEL PRIMEAU: This video has left me baffled.
We have a rippling effect that's consistent with the movements
of the snake, which has a level of consistency that
would be incredibly difficult to manufacture.
If it has been changed.
It's been changed to a minimum degree.
NARRATOR: So could it be a relative of Titanoboa?
Marine biologist Dr. Shea Conger says that even if the video is
totally legit, the creature's distended midsection
is key evidence.
SHEA CONGER: It appears to have consumed
a very large prey, possibly a capybara
or some type of ungulate.
From what we know about the Titanoboa,
they primarily consumed fish.
NARRATOR: Based on that dietary profile,
Conger concludes this is a giant anaconda.
But interestingly, she is not prepared to dismiss
the notion that it could still be the god, Boiuna.
SHEA CONGER: The people that inhabit
this area have spent centuries living around these animals.
The division between the deity and the biological creature
are not two different things.
So to deny the fact that this animal may embody
a regional deity or religious icon
is outside the scope of what science should do.
So with that guidance in mind, our verdict,
this is a giant Anaconda.
And whether you want to call it a predator, a deity,
or some combination of both depends
on how close you live to it.