Siamese Pike

image A photo of a curious fish with one head but two bodies has been doing the email rounds. Is it real, or is it Photoshop? It's real, if the Texas Reptiles website can be trusted (and they sound like they know what they're talking about to me). The picture shows a siamese Northern Pike caught by Donald Tayer on the Ottertail River in North Dakota. The Texas Reptiles site also has an interesting gallery of other 'freaks of nature,' including a photo of an 18-foot alligator supposedly found on a construction site in Florida (the picture is real, but the gator was only 13.5 feet long).

Animals Photos

Posted on Fri Jun 11, 2004


Comments

one problem with this is that the Ottertail River is in Minnesota, not ND.
Posted by Deano  on  Fri Jun 11, 2004  at  03:40 PM
That was my mistake (I'm pretty bad at geography). The Texas Reptiles site said it was on the Ottertail River near Wahpeton, ND. But I guess 'near' doesn't mean it's in ND, as I assumed.
Posted by The Curator  in  San Diego  on  Fri Jun 11, 2004  at  04:29 PM
If look closely at the left body, it looks like the people who took this pic stuck the head of the smaller fish on the left into the gill of the bigger fish.
Posted by Chase B.  on  Fri Jun 11, 2004  at  07:28 PM
Hoax or not , this is a freaky picture.
I'd place it right up there with all the "real photographic evidence" you can find nowadays about the chupacabra. ( I remember when all the "proof" was just "eyewitness accounts" and art ...but now you can find quite a few disturbing chupacabra-related pictures )
Posted by k24601  on  Mon Jun 28, 2004  at  01:43 PM
fake or not it is 100% posible. I have witnessed as a child during a trip to yellow stone, a farm with had many deformed animals such as a two headed cow (also have seen a two headed turtle in a tank at homsasis springs florida)and a six leged cow in which two extra unusable and motionless calf size legs hung from just above his normal front legs. However most interesting was a two bodied one headed donkey which was fetured on Riplys. living proof of the fishes deformation posobility.
Posted by ben  on  Tue Jul 06, 2004  at  11:27 AM
what weight was the siamese pike do you know
Posted by gervinny  on  Tue Jun 19, 2007  at  02:12 PM
My first glance at this photo was a 'holy sh*t, that's incredible' reaction.

Then I thought about it. Sure it's possible but I have a feeling this would have been all over the news somewhere. Look closer and you'll see the flaws. We live in a world where photoshop can doctor pretty much anything. The photo is obviously a good illusion and makes for a good fish story. First clue is the bodies aren't the same size. Second, the left body scale patterns are not really facing the same direction as the one on the right for the angle the fish would be laying. There's a crease where the right body gill is. The left body's head was inserted into the gills of the right fish and a little photoshop was (or could have been) done. (Notice how the left body's dark back disappears inside the lighter gills).

Great picture though...had me at first.
Posted by JR  on  Thu Mar 27, 2008  at  11:53 AM
I believe the term siamese is reserved for living things born in a womb (mammals) - not fish which hatch seperately from eggs.

The photoshop was done well and I agree about the insertion of the right gill. Also, the e-mail I received stated it was caught in Canada.
Posted by Timbo  on  Tue Apr 01, 2008  at  08:37 PM
Funny, the email I recieved said it was caught in Montana.
Posted by kl  on  Tue Jun 03, 2008  at  07:23 PM
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