Another underdeveloped set of conjoined twins became an attraction in a remote Indian town after word spread around of the infant’s birth on Saturday. The baby has eight limbs made up of four arms and four legs.
The baby boy has separate hips and legs, but his chest is fused and he has only one head. He was born in the Giridih district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, reports the Telegraph.
Similar to a baby girl born a few weeks ago who has a nose like an elephant, the newborn is also being worshipped as a reincarnation of the Hindu god Lord Ganesh, a deity with the head of an elephant. The baby girl lives in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Lord Ganesh, also known as Ganapati and Vinayaka, is revered as remover of obstacles, patron of arts and sciences and deva of intellect and wisdom. Because he is considered a god of beginnings, Hindu followers honour him at the start of rituals and ceremonies.
In some case, like a girl born with multiple limbs in 2007, she not only attracted worshippers but also a circus owner who offered to buy her to be used as an attraction in a freak show. Fortunately for the poor parents of Lakshmi, named after the Hindu goddess of wealth, they were not dazzled by the offer of wealth by the circus owner.
They had Lakshmi’s extra feet removed in a surgery and the girl, now seven, walks normally. A charity paid for the surgical procedure and even her education.
Other parents who have children with similar deformities may not have sold their babies to circus owners. But they also benefit financially because of the number of people who “worship” their children, some of whom come from far places.
For instance, Kuntalesh Panday went on a journey of 70 miles to see the baby with eight limbs – still unnamed. He initially thought the photo of infant that his friend showed him was Photoshopped, but when the friend confirmed it was a real image, he went right away to the remote Indian village.
Such babies are known in medical communities as parasitic twins or heteropagus twins in which the children are asymmetrically conjoined identical or monozygotic twins. The tissues of the severely defective twin are dependent for survival on the heart of the other twin who is largely intact.
It’s a rare condition that happens one in one million live births, according to Babymed.com. One possible explanation for parasitic twins is in vitro fertilisation because of the number of eggs implanted and the higher-than-normal rates of multiples. However, a lot of the cases are in poorer nations such as India and Egypt where parents of these babies did not undergo IVF.
