Two-Headed Dog

This hub contains pictures and photographs relating to a disturbing experiment involving animals. Please do not read on or scroll down to the picture if this topic may be disturbing to you.

This news archive photograph dated from April 15th of 1959. It shows Dr Vladimir Demikhov with research assistant Maria Tretekova. It shows an unnamed German Shepherd dogs onto which has been grafted the living head and front legs of a puppy. The conjoined dog lives for 20 days.

This picture is very disturbing. In fact I hesitated to post it. Unlike many of my other vintage photographs this is not something that happened due to mutation or some other unintended congenital condition, or even disease or misadventure. This conjoined animal was produced by deliberate surgery.

Dr Demikhov's goal was to develop the technology of transplant surgery, ultimately leading to our current ability to transplant organs such as the heart and kidney. As well as the head transplants he carried out heart and lung transplants in dogs that were probably the first successful animal trasplants carried out.

Is such an experiment justified, given the suffering it must have caused these animals? I really do not know.

Experiments conducted today must limit suffering and use a "humane endpoint" where an animal in irreversible pain is euthanized rather than being left to die. But in the 1950s things were not so closely regulated.

Other pictures of the same dog can be seen here:

• Corbis 1
• Corbis 2

Experiments of the type picture were carried out on several different occasions:

• January 13, 1959

• Wikipedia