Malan Hughes was only going to conduct a tuberculosis test.
It was May 2021, on a farm in Gwynedd, North Wales, and among the cows was a dairy and British Blue crossbred calf, just four months old. When the veterinarian approached to examine it, she noticed something no manual had taught her to expect: a third eye, located on the outside of its face, with its own eyelids, eyelashes, and a moisture that seemed to secrete some kind of natural lubricant, just like the other two.
“I’ve seen cyclops lambs, animals with two heads, but never anything like this”, Hughes said. The most intriguing thing is that, on the outside, the extra eye looked completely healthy. What no one could determine was whether there was anything actually functioning behind it, or whether it was just a replica formed by a developmental error before birth. For the National Farmers’ Union, it was an extremely rare case, probably linked to a genetic problem during the first weeks of gestation.