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Fish were doing it first

By Daniel Smith on Feb 26, 09 12:22 PM

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Ancient fish could have invented switching off the lights and putting on some Barry White.

Scientists have come across a fossilised fish which they think was one of the earliest vertebrates to reproduce sexually.

The Australian find - which dates back some 365 million years - came complete with a 5cm-long embryo.

It is thought that fertilisation outside the mother's body (like in frogs) came way before the current status quo.

But this fish, which had tough armour and is a distant relation to our good selves, proves it was going on a long, long time ago.

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Also on the theme of sex and watery animals, this week revealed that male humpback whales like their mates to a have plenty of 'junk in their trunk'.

Research has revealed that in these sea-faring mammals, the larger the lady, the more popular she is with the fellas.

They reckon the bigger the mother, the bigger the calf and the more chance of any offspring surviving.

Weird Science Factoid: Fleas can jump 130 times higher than their own height. In human terms this is equal to a 6ft person jumping 780ft into the air. Boing!

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2 Comments

rubyrose said:

Ah but did you know the Amazon Molly Fish hasn't had sex for over 70,000 years. Apparently their offspring are clones of their mothers ;-)

Daniel Smith Author Profile Pagesaid:

Now that's what I call top quality weird science! I thank you.

Authors

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.

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