PHUKET and the region is mourning Tootle, the two-headed turtle. He, she or it - there was never any indication of gender, so perhaps it was all three - went to turtle heaven on August 30.

Death was almost inevitable, really, once local media outlets reported just a couple of days earlier that the creature seemed amazingly robust and extremely healthy.

An autopsy performed on little Tootle established conclusively what everyone suspected - that two heads are not necessarily always better than one.

What the Navy examiners found was that Tootle actually also had two hearts and two sets of digestive organs. They speculate that internal competition between the two Tootles probably led to the creature's speedy demise.

There were no signs that the tiny turtle had been involuntarily consuming plastic bags, or caught in a fishing net, two reasons often given for the demise of adult turtles in the Phuket region.

Alive, the little turtle produced a dramatic increase in visitors to the Royal Thai Navy base at Taplamu, a fairly brief drive north of Phuket, in Phang Nga.

Dead, Tootle has been carefully examined, and preserved in a jar.

The hope is that a few more tiny single-headed turtles, released back into the sea as part of the Navy hatching program, will benefit from the donations that came in during Tootle's brief life.