A pet store in Berkeley that lays claim to the title of oldest reptile shop in the US, the East Bay Vivarium, has been taking care of a California king snake with a rare mutation — and even more rare is that it has survived over six months.

Two-headed snakes are rare finds but not incredibly so. As The Reptarium explains, the condition, called bicephaly, occurs in about 1 out of 100,000 snake births, and "Even though the snake has one body, they still have two heads, which means two brains to operate one body system."

East Bay Vivarium employees Angel Hamilton and Zeke White tell the Chronicle this week that they were excited to find the newly hatched, two-headed king snake in September, but they weren't hopeful for its survival. In the wild, two headed snakes have limited mobility and are more easily susceptible to becoming prey — even if they have fully functioning internal systems. And in captivity, the reptile shop's owner, John Emberton, has seen several two-headed snakes hatch over the years, but they never survived more than hours or days.

To everyone's surprise, though, Angel/Zeke, as the snake has been named, seems to be doing okay more than six months on. So they decided to share their find on Instagram in late March. An x-ray that you can see below shows Angel and Zeke's shared digestive system, which the pet shop staff says seems to be fully functioning.

And while the two heads each have minds of their own, literally, pulling in opposite directions at times, only one, the right head, has been doing the eating when presented with food. Still, they think when the snake reaches adulthood, the left head may do some of the eating as well, and has shown interest in food. (Here's a reel of the feeding process involving a frozen and thawed baby mouse, if you like that kind of thing.)

The shop staff also thinks that the smaller, left head, may be a bit smarter and/or aware of its surroundings, as they say in a Q&A.

Follow the store on Instagram for updates on Angel/Zeke, or go check out the snake yourself. Emberton still isn't too confident that the snake will survive a long time, but if it does, he is considering selling it to a museum or zoo.