Medicine: Deceptive Bitterling

Not quite two years ago physicians and prospective parents welcomed the news that a small, carp-like fish could tell whether or not a woman was going to have a baby (TIME, Jan. 7, 1935). Called bitterling, the female fish has a small tube protruding from her underside. When the bitterling is about to lay eggs, the tube lengthens and enables her to deposit her ova in the siphon of a fresh water mussel, among whose gills they ripen and hatch. Drs. Aaron Elias Kanter, Carl Philip Bauer & Arthur Herman Klawans of the University...

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