Having discovered the existence of chocolate zombie bunnies yesterday, we wake up to chocolate eggs this morning. I think it's time for a biology lesson...
As exciting as the sex life of chocolate zombie bunnies is, let's to inject a little bit of reality; thanks to this colourful creature, a handsome mandarin duck.
This little guy has been busy, and his spouse has produced a small clutch of eggs.
In an attempt to save the species and make everyone's life that much more interesting, we'll track these four little beauties over the rest of this lockdown and see what appears.
I'm guessing ducklings.
But you can never be sure...
Ducks have a habit of laying their eggs in other duck's nests. This happened last year, ending up with a baker's dozen in one nest. Too many to successfully brood. Three hatched, none survived.
One of the problems with ducks is their aggressive behaviour. Although most animals can be judged liable in this department, ducks excel to the point where it is impossible to tell the difference between sex and murder. Killing baby ducks is simply chicken feed to them.
My normal innate empathy usually forces me to help these eggs out. By eating them.
In this case however, I'm trying nurture not nature.
At this stage the embryos are just a few cells in size, here labeled the germinal disc.
It is identical to almost every species of animal on earth. It is called a blastodisc in birds and blastocyst in mammals.
Including us.
Here's a drawing of what a blastocyst looks like...
We start life like this, smaller than a pin point, almost identical to all other animals, be it human, elephant, crocodile, goldfish, mandarin or tyrannosaur.
And we continue to develop in a near identical way, as we'll hopefully see over the next four weeks of lockdown.
Egg-citing isn't it?
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