Video of Piglet Born With Two Heads Viewed Over 7m Times

The video of a pig born with two heads has been viewed over 7 million times, after a farmer shared the clip online.

Polycephaly is the condition documented, in which an animal is born with more than one head. The condition is rare and an animal often does not live long when born with it.

"Rare things you may see on the pig farm," wrote hog farmer @skeeterscooter, sharing the clip just two days ago, which can be seen here too.

The newly born piglet is wrapped in a blanket, and although it has one body, has four eyes, two mouths and two snouts.

"Normally, the ones that I've ever seen, I've never seen them alive," said the farmer in a follow-up video. "They're always stillborn, but this one was alive so it was just something that I thought was interesting to see."

The pig died shortly after the video was taken, according to the farmer. "It died of natural causes. I did not put it down," he said.

The video was originally filmed in 2017, but the TikTok user decided to share it on the platform days ago, after deciding it was "something cool to share," and "something rare to see on a pig farm."

"This makes me kind of sad," commented one TikTok user, while other viewers dubbed it "scary".

Little is known about the exact cause of polycephaly but it's believed to be caused by either an embryo splitting incompletely or two or more embryos fusing together.

Although polycephaly is a rare condition, there have been a few documented cases in pigs including 1998's Ditto, who lived until nine months and became somewhat of a piggy celebrity. Born in Iowa with two mouths, two snouts, two heads and three eyes, Ditto was bought from Scott and Vicki Vorwold for $5,000 by Pigs Without Partners, saving him from an interested circus freak show.

Ditto, then named Rudy, was flown from Iowa to California, where he awaited reconstructive jaw surgery. The pig wore a helmet to protect its head as a neurological disorder caused him to fall frequently, and the organization welded him a piggy walker to aid him.

The pig had been living in the garden of Pigs Without Partners' director Rocky More, where it was expected to stay until it recovered from facial surgery and moved in with a foster family. Ditto passed away in June 1998 from a suspected aneurysm, just days before the operation.

Most animals with polycephaly barely survive a few days, making Ditto's nine months hugely unexpected.

More recently, a two-headed pig made headlines in 2020 after being born in the Philippines. Named Copig, after the pandemic, it died just four days after its birth.