Graphic pictures of Leo twins that passed away

[TortieLuver]

I wanted to share this with you, as we are always wanting to learn development and why things happen. I had this clutch of Leopard eggs that all hatched about 6 months ago, except for two eggs. The two eggs both looked viable and chalked up so I left them. I have periodically checked on them and they never molded or appeared bad. Well a few days ago, I looked in the incubator and saw a hairline fracture along the top of the of the egg and noticed it hard cracked (but not through piping). The end result were twins that had passed away. It appears that the development of them started much later than the rest of the clutch. The larger one looks almost the size of a regular leopard born but you can see the other one is 1/3 of that size. It looks like development was far along, as you can see physically. It looks like development ended not long ago, as there's no mold/foul smell etc.

Anyone else experienced twinning? I know awhile back Kbaker had one.

 

[Neal]

No experience with that, but very interesting.

 

[Missy]

Thats to bad

 

[dmarcus]

Wow that is something...Thanks for sharing these photo's..

 

[Fernando]

Poor little dudes.

 

[l0velesly]

Aww, it's sad that they didn't make it. Very sad

 

[ALDABRAMAN]

We have never had twins, thank you form posting. It is educational for sure.

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Christy:

Does that larger one have a split vertebal scute too? Interesting pictures. Thanks for sharing.

 

[dmmj]

No personal experience, but I know there have been a few threads here about it, I often wonder if the twin effect ends so badly because there is not enough nutrients in the egg, to sustain 2 ?

 

[Yvonne G]

I don't think its nutrients so much as space. They usually grow too big to stay in the egg, and they're not developed enough yet to be out of the egg.

 

[Laura]

are you going to preserve them?
donate to a science school?

 

[DixieParadise]

Sorry for the little guys, but very interesting pictures. I tend to agree that there probably isn't enough space to fully develop two.

 

[onarock]

Thanks for sharing Christy. Very informative.

 

[TortieLuver]

That's another interesting factor Yvonne with development. I have never even produced one single tortoise hatchling with a split scute and your are right. The larger one has one split vertebral scute, as well as an extra one (to which I haven't produced with leos either). So temps were accurate for normal scutes. Also, the right side has only three costal scutes. The smaller one had all normal scutes. So the question of development is how did that happen? We normally think it's due to temps.

Laura~That's a fabulous idea giving to a science school. I wonder if anyone in the U.S. are doing studies on embryo tortoise development.

 

[JeffG]

Thanks for posting that. One of my skinks just gave birth to still born twins 2 weeks ago too. Five days later she had4 perfectly healthy babies. I wonder if the survival rate of twins is much lower than singles across species of reptiles.

 

[Jacob]

Poor little Guys!

 

[yagyujubei]

Too bad they didn't make it. I find it interesting that they don't have identical natal scutes. I would say that they're fraternal twins. Twinning isn't that unusual in the mediterranean species, with both surviving. I haveb't heard about leopards though.