A mutant goat with eyes in the middle of its forehead has been found on a Turkish farm.
Ahmet Kartal, 40, a livestock farmer, said he had been raising animals for 25 years in the village of Gokmusa, in the province of Kilis, and had never seen anything like the one-eyed goat.
He explained that he went to check on his animals and noticed that a baby goat had been born.
When he took a closer look at the newly-born animal, he saw that the eyes of the livestock were firmly planted right in the centre of its forehead, like a cyclops, the fearsome beast from Greek mythology.
Kartal said: “I shuddered when I first saw the kid in the barn when I went to check on it. It did not make a sound, but when I took the photo, I felt like the kid was watching me.
“I’ve been doing this job for 25 years. It’s the first time I’ve encountered anything like this. I have never seen or heard of such a thing.
“People who see it are also surprised.
“I cannot deal with it, I want the authorities to take it away and keep it alive.”
A representative of the Veterinary Medicine Department of Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, Dr Ahmet Uyar, said the central eye of the goat was caused by a development called cebocephaly.
Dr Uyar said: “This condition is known scientifically as cebocephaly. Each eye should be in a separate orbital socket, but in this case, both eyes are small and are in one orbital socket. But in this case, there is also an anomaly in the nose.
“In such cases, the nose may either be small or non-existent. There is also an anomaly in the ear.
“The lower jaw is also quite large. These are congenital anomalies. It is a condition that we occasionally encounter in both humans and animals.”