Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered this strange snake when it was crawling on the wall of her bedroom in the middle of the night. “I was sleeping when I woke up because I heard a strange scratching sound on the wall. Turning on the light, I saw that monster crawling along the wall with a single leg with its claws sticking out,” Ms. Duan said.

Ms. Duan said she was so scared that she quickly grabbed a shoe and pounded it repeatedly until the snake died. Then she soaked the snake’s body in a bottle of wine.

The snake is about 40cm long and only the thickness of a little finger. It is now being studied at the Life Sciences Department of West Normal University in Nanchang (Jiangxi, China). Snake expert Long Shuai said: “We were really shocked when we saw the snake. But we have to wait for the autopsy to find out the cause.”

Usually, the common genetic variation in snakes is the two-headed snake. Such snakes are often captured and carefully preserved, but they have little chance of surviving in the wild, especially when the two heads are prone to attack each other.