This week a baby boy with four arms, four legs and two faces was born in India.
A baby boy in India died after being born with four arms, four legs and two faces.
This week, the baby’s mother, Rama Devi, 38, was rushed to a rural hospital when she began experiencing labour pains.
However, hospital staff and villagers were shocked to discover that the child was born attached to another body that had not fully developed.
This caused the child to come out with two pairs of faces, legs and arms.
The underdeveloped legs and arms were apparently protruding from the child’s chest.
The child died five hours after birth.
The condition is so rare that doctors don’t have a name for it.
It is unclear exactly how the child died, although the baby was unable to breastfeed or consume milk on its own.
Seeing the unusual appearance of the baby, the hospital staff reacted with fear and quickly took the baby outside, triggering chaos inside the hospital. However, Ramphal, Ms Devi’s husband, expressed his amazement at the birth of his only child.
Although the birth was uncomplicated and uneventful, it occurred in a rural area where women rarely undergo prenatal screening, which may explain why the baby’s condition came as a surprise.
The family is believed to have other children.
Although it is unclear whether this exact condition has been observed before, several other incredibly rare forms of conjoined twins have been reported in India and neighboring countries.
Last November, a 30-year-old woman in India gave birth to a baby with four hands and four legs.
In Indonesia, two twin babies were born joined at the pelvis, leaving them with three legs, four arms and one penis and were nicknamed “spider twins.”
And two in every million children worldwide are born with diprosopus, a rare form of conjoined twins in which all or part of the face is duplicated. In these cases, the faces and brains are connected only by a brain stem.
The child, who died five hours after birth, was unable to breastfeed properly or drink milk on his own, although the delivery itself was normal.
Conjoined twins generally account for one in every 50,000 to 200,000 live births and occur when a single fertilized egg splits and develops into two individuals.
Between eight and 12 days after conception, the layers that divide to form identical twins develop into specific organs and structures, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The process is believed to end prematurely, giving rise to conjoined twins.
However, another theory suggests that two separate embryos fuse early in development.