The Milk Came Out the Neck

Vladimir Demikhov coined the word transplantology. He performed the first heart-lung transplant in a mammal in 1946, the first successful coronary bypass on a dog in 1953, and taught Christiaan Barnard, who flew to a Moscow basement in 1960 to learn from him. The basement was at the Sklifosovsky Institute, in an outbuilding, in a room about fifteen square meters across. That is where the next part happened.

In 1959 he sewed the head and front legs of a small mongrel named Shavka onto the neck of a stray German shepherd named Brodyaga.

This was the twenty-fourth time he had done it. The earlier pairs had behaved like ordinary dogs with a small extra dog attached. The puppy head bit the shepherd's ear in play. The shepherd shook its head and let it. When the big head got thirsty, the small head got thirsty. They went on walks. The longest-lived pair, hosted by a shepherd named Pirat, made it twenty-nine days.

When LIFE magazine sent a photographer, Demikhov knew exactly what would happen, and set out milk anyway. The puppy head lapped eagerly.

The milk poured out of its esophagus, onto the shepherd's neck, in front of the cameras.

He had arranged it that way.