A silly question doctors are sometimes asked is if an unborn baby can get pregnant (FYI they can’t). But that doesn’t mean conditions like fetus in fetu don’t exist. Now, the baby isn’t actually pregnant, but this is where a baby is born with a “malformed parasitic twin inside its own body,” it’s when a baby literally absorbs its undeveloped twin. This is a freak occurrence and is super rare; there are less than two hundred documented cases of it in all of medical history. So now imagine just how freaky it is that a baby in China was born with not one, but two fetuses inside her abdomen.

Doctors first knew something was wrong when they saw a mass inside the baby’s stomach during an ultrasound. They thought it was something more common like a tumor or a hemorrhage of sorts. But a few days later, a new ultrasound revealed that the “tumor” was actually two solid masses that each contained two long bones and a spine. There were no reported complications with the birth of the baby, but when she was just two weeks old doctors decided to remove the masses.

The “masses” turned out to be two fetuses. In addition to the long bones and spines the doctors already knew about, they also found umbilical cords that were even joined to a structure resembling a placenta. They were less than four centimeters long and determined to be about ten weeks into development with all four limbs, segmented spines, developed rib cages, intestines and even primitive brain tissue. The regional obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) specialist said that they were too small to properly detect in any prenatal check-up.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), fetus in fetu is might actually just be a highly developed teratoma. Now…if you thought this was a weird story so far, this is where s*** really gets cray. Teratomas are a type of tumors that show multiple germ layers and their tissue tends to be different than those surrounding them. So basically, teratomas can actually grow teeth, hair, bone, and sometimes even crude and non-functional eyes and limbs. If you wanna see a picture, here’s the link. Be warned, it’s absolutely disgusting and I love it. It’s the thing nightmares are made out and it’s just so cool. Anyways, the WHO also classifies fetus in fetu as a twin that starts developing normally but then gets enveloped by the other twin.

PS – I hope you all look at the picture. (Also sorry for completely nerding out in this post, I got unreasonably excited about this)