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Biology: Some fish eggs can hatch after being eaten and pooped out by ducks

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fish-eggs-can-hatch-after-being-eaten-pooped-out-ducks

Science News said:
For fish eggs, getting gobbled by a duck kicks off a harrowing journey that includes a pummeling in the gizzard and an attack by stomach acids. But a few eggs can exit unscathed in a duck’s excrement, possibly helping to spread those fish, including invasive species, to different places, a new study finds.

It’s been an “open question for centuries how these isolated water bodies can be populated by fish,” says fish biologist Patricia Burkhardt-Holm of the University of Basel in Switzerland, who was not involved with the work. This study shows one way that water birds may disperse fish, she says.

Birds’ feathers, feet and feces can spread hardy plant seeds and invertebrates (SN: 1/14/16). But since many fish eggs are soft, researchers didn’t expect that they could survive a bird’s gut, says Orsolya Vincze, an evolutionary biologist at the Centre for Ecological Research in Debrecen, Hungary.

In the lab, Vincze and her colleagues fed thousands of eggs from two invasive carp species to eight mallard ducks. About 0.2 percent of ingested eggs, 18 of 8,000, were intact after defecation, the team found. Some of those eggs contained wriggling embryos and a few eggs hatched, the team reports June 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s not clear yet whether eggs survive in this way in the wild.

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Tazlima

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Does that mean's it's time to update the colloquialism?

"...like fish through a goose."

I could float with that.
 

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Does that mean's it's time to update the colloquialism?

"...like fish through a goose."

I could float with that.

The idiom is "grass" or "green grass" and if you've ever had geese, you'll shudder every time you hear it.
 

Tazlima

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The idiom is "grass" or "green grass" and if you've ever had geese, you'll shudder every time you hear it.

Wow, learn something every day! I grew up hearing it as "Shit through a goose," and never realized there were other versions. Google tells me "corn" and "grease" are also acceptable.
 

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The idiom is "grass" or "green grass" and if you've ever had geese, you'll shudder every time you hear it.

Anyone who’s worked in a US office building surrounded by lawn probably knows too. (Darned Canadians! Geese, that is, lol.)
 

Chris P

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The idiom is "grass" or "green grass" and if you've ever had geese, you'll shudder every time you hear it.

I've never heard this expression, but always thought about green grass through a cow. Mom grew up on a dairy farm, and in the spring the cows would get diarrhea from gorging themselves on green grass first thing every spring. No problem until they came into the barn for milking and would sneeze. . .
 
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Roxxsmom

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Does that mean's it's time to update the colloquialism?

"...like fish through a goose."

I could float with that.

Hahahaha!

Seriously, this is really interesting, and I have to wonder whether the "shit through a goose" adage has some reality, if "food" passes through them so quickly that a fish egg can make it though without being digested.

I am also wondering if this is essentially how certain kinds of parasitism got/get their start, with an organism's egg passing through another organism's digestive system to hatch later, but maybe some individuals hatch out in there and a tiny number have some characteristic that allows them to survive inside and exploit an amazing food source. It's common with some kinds of worms and with some fly larvae (like bot fly larvae in horses), but I've never heard of any fish larvae that actually live in another organism's intestines, though.

The idiom is "grass" or "green grass" and if you've ever had geese, you'll shudder every time you hear it.

I have seen (and stepped in) the effects of goose grazing on certain areas where Canada geese congregate, so my sympathies to goose owners everywhere. According to some sources, a single Canada goose can produce two pounds of "poop" in one day and poops approximately every 12 minutes. I imagine domesticated geese share this talent?

And I'll stop griping about how my 5-month old puppy poos 5 times a day now.
 
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