Ducks with 6 limbs are not caused by genetic changes!

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Cool: here’s a duck with four hindlimbs.

I have to gripe about the description, though:

A rare mutation has left eight-day-old Stumpy with two extra legs behind the two he moves around on. … The mutation is rare but cases have been recorded across the world.

No, no, no. This is almost certainly not the result of a mutation, and it’s one of my pet peeves when the media makes this wrong assumption, that every change in a newborn is the product of a genetic change. This is the result of a developmental error, not a genetic one, most likely caused by a fusion of two embryos in a single egg.

(via Apostropher)

“Shark after shark descends on the rotting flesh”

That’s a line in this video describing the scene when the South African police tow a beached whale carcass offshore—you can guess what it all looks like, if you’d rather not watch.

It just gets better, though. After the great white sharks have gorged themselves and are lolling about, the announcer declares that they have spotted the “tell-tale aspect of a large sexually aroused male”…

(via Byzantium’s Shores)

A new Circus of the Spineless, and a call for submissions for the next

As is traditional at the end of the month, a new Circus of the Spineless is up at The Voltage Gate. And the next Circus of the Spineless at the end of February will be…here! Start sending me good stuff on invertebrate organisms—remember, there are over 30 animal phyla, and all but one of them are fair game, and even that one contains non-vertebrate classes. Will we be able to get them all represented?