Woman Digs Up 2-Headed Piglet In Mom’s Backyard, Sharon Reagle Donates Mutated Pig To Allegheny College

Update 1:55 p.m. EST: A photo of the baby pig was recently published on the Meadville Tribune's Facebook page:

Original post: A Pennsylvania woman had an unusual Sunday afternoon when she unearthed the carcass of a two-headed piglet buried in her mother’s backyard. Sharon Reagle thought she had found a jug while gardening on her mother’s property but instead discovered the dead baby pig.

“It was unique; pretty neat really,” Reagle told the Meadville Tribune. The pig was found Sunday in a jug filled with preserving fluid. It was dark brown, had two ears, two eyes and two snouts. “It didn’t bother me at all.”

Reagle put the pig in her mother’s freezer and later decided to donate the two-headed piglet to the biology department at Allegheny College, the Associated Press reports.

"This is like Christmas for a biologist. The students will love it,” Lisa Whitenack, assistant professor of biology, said. Since carbon dating is expensive, Whitenack suggested finding out the estimated date of the jug to find out when the piglet was buried.

Whitenack said the animal’s exterior has been preserved nicely, but, once they open up the carcass, the insides might tell a different story. “We’ll thaw it out, probably by the end of fall or early winter,” Whitenack said. “Even if it’s completely liquefied inside, we can strip off the skin and everything and display the skeleton.”

Reagle said her parents lived on the property in Saegertown, Pa., for 56 years and never raised pigs. She said she has no clue how the two-headed piglet ended up buried on her family’s land.

But two-headed pigs aren’t unusual. In April, a two-headed pig was born in China. Although the chances of survival for the pig were slim, its owners decided not to slaughter it, Inquisitr reports. The condition is known as axial bifurcation, or polycephaly, and can occur in other animals besides pigs. A two-headed shark, a two-faced cat and two-headed snakes have also been spotted.

Whitenack speculated that the mutated pig experienced incomplete embryonic separation -- as is the case with conjoined twins.

As for the pig’s discoverer, Reagle said this by far the strangest item found on her mother’s property. “We’ve found old coins and a lot of things not worth anything, but this is something else,” she said. “Heaven knows what we’re going to find next.”