It looks mutated, not conjoined, but there are many things which can cause this.
In vertebrates, arms and legs are fundamentally different structures. This chick has badly formed legs and well formed arms, though the arms are in a very, very, atavistic form. So atavistic that it is most likely genes which are meant to express in the legs instead expressing in the arms.
Birds lost most of their fingers, carpal bones, hands, etc. 175 million years ago, the genetics for them will be long degraded beyond their original function. Additionally, the feathering is leg-pattern on the chick's arms.
What's probably happened here is that the chick's arms/wings have grown into legs instead of arms. There are a lot of ways this can happen.
This chick does at least have the tips of its wings. I can't tell if the wings are attached to the front set of legs' elbows as they would be if it had 4 limbs and not 6, but the wing tips should come out of the "finger" part of the wing and this would be forming out of the "thumb" part of the wing. It looks to me like the chick has a normally (more or less) formed front part, and then additional legs at the back. It also looks like the extra legs are on backwards to me.
738
u/Onikeys 29d ago
I need a video to see how it moves, if the chick has control of all the legs or is just 2 conjoined chicks