A man was walking along the beach in Turkey on Monday when something strange caught his attention. He spotted a rare two-headed dolphin lying dead on the shoreline and called the police.

Sports teacher Tugrul Metin, 39, found the corpse of the conjoined mammal on the shore in Izmir on Turkey's west coast.

The two-headed dolphin measured about a meter (3.28 feet) and was estimated to be about a year old.

Metin told AOL Travel, "I couldn't take it in at first - I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me." He added that one of the heads' eyes was not fully opened, nor was one of the blowholes.

"I noticed the dolphin in the sea and watched as it washed on to the beach," the Daily Mail reports Mr Metin as saying.

"I couldn't take it in at first. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.

"I've never even heard about a dolphin like this let alone seen one with my own eyes - I was completely shocked."

Police removed the body of the dolphin from the beach, and an associate professor from Ak Deniz University will begin studying it.

Professor Mehmet Gokoglu told press that he looked forward to analyzing the unique animal: "Such a dolphin is a very rare occurrence - similar to the occurrence of conjoined human twins."