Biologists at the University of Manchester want help in cracking their "miracle" discovery of three fish inside a sealed egg. The group found the duck egg in a small pond on a field trip to the French Alps and noticed something moving inside it. When they cracked open the shell, three live minnows were inside. They have enlisted the help of other experts, but despite their extensive combined knowledge, the biologists admit they are "baffled". Dr Matthew Cobb, a lecturer in animal behaviour at the university, said: "As 21st century scientists rather than 17th century antiquarians we think it's unlikely this represents a hitherto unknown mode of fish reproduction. "Perhaps the egg fell into the pond following some kind of predatory attack but we're baffled as to how the minnows got to be inside. "Certainly, we didn't see any crack in the egg."

Dr Cobb and his colleague, Henry McGhie, head of natural sciences at the Manchester Museum, have written to the New Scientist magazine in the hope readers will help solve the mystery. Minnows are small freshwater fish, often used as bait by anglers.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

auww...another freak of the nature

[size=4]As a Biologist, I have no idea as to the answer to this...

Haha, I'll say! Maybe when the egg was freshly laid, it then fell in the water for whatever reason. Minnows were close by and probably thought it was food. They somehow penetrated the shell, in which, it repaired itself and hardened, thus trapping the minnows inside. Could happen? LOL!

the egg doesn't look very sealed.




nvm.

This story seems a bit 'Fishy' to me

A few things don't make sense:

In that pic, the minnows look dead: They said they were moving inside the egg, so they would have been alive... so how come they left them in the 'now cracked' egg and let them die without water, you would think they would rush them into water to study them alive if they really were from the egg.

If the minnows got inside the egg when they were smaller and the egg's initial hole sealed over then the minnows would have died long ago by suffocation.

Why did they crack open the egg because something was moving inside it? Wouldn't they assume it was a baby duck and just left it for 'nature to take it's course'

I think these field trip Biologists are pulling a hoax.

Good points Dakotabre, I agree.

I agree also. I was trying to think of a natural explaination, but Dakotabre may very well be right.

If there is a natural explanation, my GUESS would be that the minnows entered the egg somehow when they were small (possibly as eggs themselves), and as they developed, they lived off of the yolk inside the egg.

If true, and not a hoax, utterly baffling. I wonder how small minnow eggs are -- perhaps there was a teeny, tiny opening in the egg, some minnow eggs got inside, and then they ..... no, no -- that doesn't sound good either .... a real mystery!

It will be interesting to see if they get any answers back from magazine. Whatever the response, I hope it will be updated so we will know for sure if this is a hoax or not.

I hope these biologists aren't playing a hoax. As scientists, this sort of thing
ahould be beneath them. But whatever the cause, it certainly is strange.

Couldn't the fish have been digested somehow by the maker of the egg and somehow the fish ended up in it's egg?

Um, No.

No.

If it was digested, it would have been broken down...

hahaaaa..well blow me I dont know why the boffins are sooo confuddled myself as living next to the wye river we get things like this..minnows when they are teeeeny widdle babbies are so small they get inside things..the egg must have had a tiny hole, they ate the egg and grew the hole clogged up with silt and other such stuff often found in rivers and hey there you go fish eggs hehehehe...

Actually, that sort of thing has happened a number of times as I can recollect, but unfortunately, only in cartoons.

Ok ok ok!

Wow! That's pretty tripped out!

I wonder how that happened?!

The strange sexual habits of ducks.

Maybe the title should be , "Students of Biology of the University of Manchester fool Dr. Matthew Cobb with fake duck egg!"
I can see a stunt like that!

alien eggs!!!!!!! haha

some sort of genetic minipulation?

Wow. Whoever your Biology teacher was should be fired.

How can we be sure that the fish were even in there when the people opened the egg?

come on, no imagination.

Maybe the fish swam up the duck's repreductive thingy and when the egg was being materialized or whatever in the duck(however it happens) the fish got stuck in there... Maybe the fish were at the wrong place at the wrong time?

well that fish should be dead inside that egg!

I saw some show on A&E where some guy had a kid in a grocery store...He found a lemon in a orange , a egg in the lemon , and a parakeet in the egg......

Eggs are semipermiable. Oxygen can seep through the eggshell and CO2 can seep out.

Maybe...maybe...some minnow eggs were swept through a tiny crack in the shell and the minnows ate the embryo as they developed, but it's much more likely this is a hoax.

I am baffled by this also...All I can say is hoax?

just because it can't be explained doesn't nesscarilly make it a hoax

just be more creative with your answers because the truth is stranger than fiction (just don't be duck+fish creative)

Duck lays egg

Egg infertile

Egg falls into pond and gets small crack

minnow egg goes into egg

minnows develop

minnows can't get out

someone finds egg

ta-da

How about this?

Two ducks mating in a pond where there is a large amount of fish milt. Some microbe-sized fertilised fish eggs--embryos--enter the cloaca along with the male duck's sperm. The duck egg is not fertilised and the eggshell forms with the fish embryos inside. This is laid as an infertile egg. Or, possibly the duck egg is fertilised, but the growing fish embryos kill it off and ingest it as food. Either way the environment inside the egg is conducive to growth; the fish have more nutrition in there than they would in the open water; also protection from predators and disease.

Probably it's a hoax, though.

Tell me how the fish ate then

They didn't eat; they absorbed the nutrients from the amniotic fluid just like the bird embryo would have.

If the story isn't a hoax it's just another example that proves there's more to life than science can explain. Magic exists and miracles do happen. I have a book with stories about human teeth being found inside chunks of coal which supposedly formed long before man existed, frogs buried in concrete for fifty years only to revive when exposed to the air, and, of course...fish and other objects like walnuts falling from the sky. I LOVE that kind of stuff. Take Care...

Before hurricane Katrina sank the city of New Orleans, it was revealed to men, and published, that very soon things would begin happening on earth, that would defy scientific understanding. The reason is simple. Science has become the false religion of mankind, promising eternal life through humanism, attempting to make the Resurrection null and void. Therefore, science shall be made a mockery before men, just as Katrina made a mockery of the U.S. government's division of

Homeland Security

Without providing sources for your comments, they are nothing more than hearsay, and speculation on your part.

I find it odd that the interior of the egg appears so clean, what happened to all the contents?

If we look at vertebrae morphology, in the early stages of embryonic development all embryos start out fishlike, with gills, fins, and tails regardless of the species of the parents that produced it (this includes humans). Maybe the genes that kick in later in the embryos development that tell the embryo that it’s a duck did not switch on, causing it to continue developing as a fish.

I know this is a sketchy hypothesis but it’s the best I could come up with. Then again the most likely explanation is it’s a hoax.

Raptor, out of respect for others who may not have a connection as fast as yours, please do not post photos that have nothing to do with the topic and are simply adding wasted bandwidth to be downloaded.

This doesn't just break the rules, it smashes them.

Umm, Raptor, what does this have to do with the topic at hand?

My theory is as valid as any other here, especially for such a strange occurrence, or are you saying the power of God isn't real? Who do you think planted this Garden?

It's a low bandwidth picture, however, if you allow thumbnails, I can use these where appropriate.

I'm with you... perhaps the naked eye couldn't see the tiny hole or crack that the eggs passed through and after finishing gestation and such inside the egg that when wanted to emerge they were too big to leave the same way they entered.

I don't really care about your theory, or to debate of gods existance with you. I am however wanting to keep threads on topic and free of pointless photos that are not related to the topic at hand. It is one thing to add photos of appropriate material for the topic, but having seen the photos that you have posted that is mostly not the case. To post off topic photos is annoying, frustrating and a waste of space. We don't need to see a pentagram and a snake photo in the nasa threads, or the similar off topic posting. I know it probably means much to you to do so, but that is not appropriate here.

Maybe that's how minnow's are made and they just didn't know it!

Raptor, your views on god don't belong with fish found sealed inside a duck egg.

The egg story, if it's real, isn't the only thing odd happening in science. Wherever multiple rules seem to be broken, which science cannot explain according to well established theory. Either the theory is wrong, or someone or SOMETHING is indeed breaking them.

It's sort of like the Twin Towers collapsing, defying all previous fires in history. Every time I start my charcoal grill I think of the potential heat limit of that kerosene flame. The grill never melts Fluffy, yet where are your brothers speaking this truth on behalf of their dead companions?

There are many mysteries in the world which science doesn't have an answer for, for various reasons.

[quote name='ghostboy83' date='Sep 26 2006, 03:47 PM' post='136629


Raptor, your views on god don't belong with fish found sealed inside a duck egg.
[/quote]
I agree. Raptor, you should stay on topic. There is another page on this site for you
to express your religious opinions.

Does anything you've posted so far have anything to do with the topic of this page?
In what way do the Twin Towers have anything to do with minnows in a ducks egg?

Ok, here's a humanistic theory. The little children lied to grab some headlines.