Adelphophagy
My graduate seminar as seen through biological analog:
Among the lamnoid sharks, a particularly bizarre reproductive strategy is employed.
The maternal ovary produces thousands of relatively small eggs about the size of a garden pea, each enclosed in an egg case. Embryo development rapidly exhausts yolk reserves. Sand tiger embryos precociously develop tooth buds by the time they are 30 mm in total length and by 60 mm they have multiple rows of erupted teeth. Embryos
use their dentition to tear out of their egg case and feed on other uterine eggs in a process called oophagy (egg eating) and - in the case of the sand tiger - cannibalise other smaller uterine siblings (intrauterine cannibalism or embryophagy).
At term only one fetus survives in each uterus, achieving gigantic proportions of more than a metre in length.
Among the lamnoid sharks, a particularly bizarre reproductive strategy is employed.
The maternal ovary produces thousands of relatively small eggs about the size of a garden pea, each enclosed in an egg case. Embryo development rapidly exhausts yolk reserves. Sand tiger embryos precociously develop tooth buds by the time they are 30 mm in total length and by 60 mm they have multiple rows of erupted teeth. Embryos
use their dentition to tear out of their egg case and feed on other uterine eggs in a process called oophagy (egg eating) and - in the case of the sand tiger - cannibalise other smaller uterine siblings (intrauterine cannibalism or embryophagy). At term only one fetus survives in each uterus, achieving gigantic proportions of more than a metre in length.
posted by d l wright at 10/23/2005 11:59:00 AM
2 Comments:
why aren't you writing your thesis on oophagy?
i gave up the biological sciences when professor kirn made fun of the gypsies.
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