One of nature’s weirdest creatures has been born at Weymouth Sea Life Park.

Delighted staff are celebrating the birth of their first ever ‘four-eyed fish’ baby ‘Annie’.

Also called the ‘Anablep,’ the four-eyed fish hails from the Amazon and actually has just two eyes which are a peculiar figure-of-eight shape and have evolved so that the top half is adapted for use above water while the lower half sees best when submerged.

“They are also bizarre in that some have their reproductive organs on the left side and others on the right,” said curator Fiona Smith.

“This means that right-sided males can only mate with left-sided females, and vice-versa.”

The park has hosted a group of nine adult four-eyed fish in its Amazon exhibition for about four years, and hopes the strange new arrival will be the first of many.

“It’s a sign that we’ve got the water quality and light-levels just right for them, and that they have a healthy diet,” said Fiona.

Measuring just two inches, the youngster is expected to grow rapidly on a diet of insects and microscopic shrimps and reach its full size of about seven inches in just eight months.

Found in the estuaries and mangrove swamps of coastal South America, four-eyed fish are sometimes left high and dry by tides but are capable of surviving short periods out of water.