In 1955, at a meeting of the Moscow Surgical Society, a sensational exhibit was presented to the assembled guests. On the platform close to the audience, a large white dog was brought in. The dog looked happy, cheerfully wagging its tail, and unintimated by the large crowd of eager guests in front of him. He seemed particularly unconcerned by the unnatural appendage protruding from the side of his neck.

Just a few days before the meet, the dog had undergone a major surgery during which the Soviet scientist Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov had attached to the side of his neck a second head, acquired from a small brown-haired puppy. Both the hound and the decapitated head of the puppy were alive and reacting to stimuli. And even as the surgeons watched, the puppy's head gave the ear of its host a nasty bite. The white head snarled.