It was named after Janus, the two-faced Roman god. And there are also two very different personalities in the turtle.
Geneva – Thanks to extensive care, a two-headed turtle in Switzerland has reached the age of 25. On his birthday on Saturday, the animal named Janus, who lives in Geneva’s Natural History Museum, was washed with a toothbrush. The Greek tortoise is bathed daily, massaged regularly, pampered with a special diet and checked for its general condition.
According to the museum, the two heads with two brains have their own personalities and sometimes want to go in different directions. The right head is more dominant, the left more phlegmatic. That’s why the nursing team keeps a constant eye on Janus and, if necessary, moves him from his back to a prone position, because the animal cannot straighten up immediately.
The amphibian hatched into the museum’s care in 1997 and was named after Janus, the two-faced Roman god. The animal would hardly have survived in the wild because the two heads cannot be pulled into the shell for protection due to lack of space. dpa
