Conjoined Bangladeshi twins who were separated last week by surgeons in Australia are out of intensive care and in a stable condition, officials said. Krishna and Trishna, who turn three next month, underwent 32 hours of surgery at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, where a team of surgeons separated their heads and rebuilt their skulls.

They were moved yesterday to a ward, where they have been watching DVDs in their cots, Chief of Surgery Leo Donnan said in a statement today, adding the girls are moving their arms and legs, smiling and making noise.“They are conscious of each other,” Donnan said. “They can see each other.”

The twins were placed in a Bangladeshi orphanage at birth and brought to Australia in 2007 by the Children First Foundation. Conjoined twins occur once in every 200,000 live births and about 35 percent survive only one day, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. They’re formed when a developing embryo starts to split into identical twins during the first few weeks after conception and stops before the process is complete, according to the center’s fact sheet.

While it is still “early days in the psychological side of their journey,” the girls are doing well, Donnan said in the statement.

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) To contact the reporter on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney

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