The second episode of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy‘s Fallout adaptation gives viewers a little treat in the form of a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo of a two-headed cattle. In those 0.5 seconds, I immediately knew that I would die for the strange creature and also that I needed more of it.
The cattle — called Brahmin — appear throughout the video game series, according to Fandom. They are depicted as mutated cattle with two heads and a large udder. The website states they can be found across the postapocalyptic United States, particularly in the Commonwealth.
Much like traditional cattle in the real world, the creatures are used for transportation, fertilizer, milk, meat, and material in the video game.
The animal appears in Episode 2 of the Prime Video series, which follows a group of survivors nearly 200 years after a nuclear apocalyptic disaster. Lucy (Ella Purnell), an optimistic Vault-dweller, leaves her safe haven to venture into the post-war world and is taken back by the destruction she witnesses. As Lucy navigates a new town, she takes in the crowded paths, the street foods vendors, and the colorful personalities.
While walking around, the young woman is shocked by a loud “moo” and looks up to see a two-headed cattle with a large saddle being guided by a rough-looking cowboy. Lucy softly smiles in the animal’s direction before continuing on her journey.
At this point in the story, the two-headed mammal isn’t part of Lucy’s journey, but we can only hope the animal makes another appearance.
For years, fans of the Fallout video game have been discussing the animal and its origins. The Brahmin fits the common depiction of post-nuclear war life that often sees traditional animals with genetic mutations à la Blinky, the three-eyed fish found in the lake outside the nuclear plant in The Simpsons.
In 2020, a Fallout fan shared their theory on Reddit, writing that the beef industry modified cows to “massively increase the rate of twinning” before the war. Then, the nuclear radiation caused those offspring to be born as dicephalic parapagus twins rather than identical twins.
Scientific research has long doubted that radiation plays a direct cause in these sorts of mutations in animals. “It’s very difficult to pin one abnormality on any particular environmental factor or event, and sometimes things just go wrong on their own,” wrote National Geographic in a 2013 article about two-headed animals. The outlet reports that the mutation is commonly caused by axial bifurcation, which sees the embryo not fully splitting into twins — thus supporting the Reddit claim above.
Murky science aside, the Fallout series left us wanting more mutant cattle!
