I
Ian Cloke
Guest
THERE'S something fishy going on at Manchester University and here is the picture to prove it.
Most pilchards come in tins, but these three minnows seem to have achieved the impossible - being born into a duck egg.
The picture, which is causing a stir in the academic world, was taken by two senior academics at the university's life sciences department during a field trip to the Alps.
The duo have now asked readers of the New Scientist magazine to help them work out how the minnows got there.
Matthew Cobb, who led the trip to St Auban in France with the department head Henry McGhie, said: "It was one of the second year students who found it in a small lake.
"Once they took a closer look they started shouting, then everyone went over and started screaming.
'Unbroken'
"What he had found seemed to be an unbroken egg and we could clearly see the fish inside because it was slightly translucent.
"So we broke open the egg and found the three minnows looking very distressed inside."
After the picture was taken, the relieved minnows were allowed to swim away and the egg was kept in storage in France.
But the university academics have been unable to crack the mystery of how the fish broke hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary law to get there.
Matthew said: "We can only think that the egg fell into the water, or more likely was dropped by a passing crow trying to get away with it.
"Even with a tiny crack the young minnows, which are less than a centimetre long, could swim inside."
He added: "A couple of hundred years ago, this would have been proof that fish are born in duck eggs, but now we are a bit more clued up - and try to work out why, apart from the obvious, these things happen."
WHAT'S your explanation for the amazing minnow egg? Have your say.
Most pilchards come in tins, but these three minnows seem to have achieved the impossible - being born into a duck egg.
The picture, which is causing a stir in the academic world, was taken by two senior academics at the university's life sciences department during a field trip to the Alps.
The duo have now asked readers of the New Scientist magazine to help them work out how the minnows got there.
Matthew Cobb, who led the trip to St Auban in France with the department head Henry McGhie, said: "It was one of the second year students who found it in a small lake.
"Once they took a closer look they started shouting, then everyone went over and started screaming.
'Unbroken'
"What he had found seemed to be an unbroken egg and we could clearly see the fish inside because it was slightly translucent.
"So we broke open the egg and found the three minnows looking very distressed inside."
After the picture was taken, the relieved minnows were allowed to swim away and the egg was kept in storage in France.
But the university academics have been unable to crack the mystery of how the fish broke hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary law to get there.
Matthew said: "We can only think that the egg fell into the water, or more likely was dropped by a passing crow trying to get away with it.
"Even with a tiny crack the young minnows, which are less than a centimetre long, could swim inside."
He added: "A couple of hundred years ago, this would have been proof that fish are born in duck eggs, but now we are a bit more clued up - and try to work out why, apart from the obvious, these things happen."
WHAT'S your explanation for the amazing minnow egg? Have your say.