In reality, the twins had been taken to the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Moscow to be studied and experimented on under laboratory conditions. Scientists did not want her to keep custody of them, so she was later told by one of Anokhin's physiologists that they had died of pneumonia. A night nurse brought the twins to their mother and let her hold them. She agreed, but on the condition that she would keep custody and visit them regularly. When the twins were born, their mother was told they required full-time care from the State.

They were born joined at the waist at a 180-degree angle with two heads, two torsos, four arms and one leg each, and a third, vestigial limb at their back that had some movement. The doctors told her she had delivered a severely disabled child ( урод) and she was not shown the babies. Masha and Dasha's mother, Yekaterina Krivoshlyapova, did not know she was having twins and spent two days and nights giving birth naturally. He began studying Masha and Dasha within days of their birth. He had put out an alert to all maternity hospitals in the USSR to be informed if any conjoined twins were born. Conjoined twins who shared a blood system but had separate nervous systems were ideal objects for research. The Soviet physiologist Pyotr Anokhin was studying the separate roles of the nervous system and the blood system on the body's ability to adjust to conditions such as prolonged sleep deprivation, extreme hunger, and extreme temperature change. Their mother was told that her daughters had died soon after their birth. They were removed from their mother's custody at birth to be studied by Soviet physiologists. Maria and Daria ('Masha and Dasha') Krivoshlyapova (Мария и Дарья Кривошляповы, 3 January 1950 – 17 April 2003) were Ischiopagus tripus conjoined twins from Russia.

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