Monstrosities Among Fishes.

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 76

Monstrosities Among Fishes.

Freaks are occasionally found among fishes, as among other animals, but they rarely live long. All fish hatcheries have freak fishes at some time or other— fishes with two heads and one tail, or with two heads and two tails, or perhaps with one head arid two tails — trut it ia most unusual for them to liye beyond the time required to absorb the. yolk sac, from which Lhe fish derives its sustenance until it is able to feed in the ordinary way. ~ Among the little fishes hatched out from a lot of lake trout eggs in a New York hatchery in 1905 was one with two heads joined to one tail. It was in form like a capital letter V, with a head at the end of each. arm. This freak turned out to be most unusual in two respects — namely, m the duration -of its life and in the manner of ?tS survival. At the end of two' months the left head, looking from the tail of the fish, died. As a rule, when one of the heads of a two-headed fish die 3 the other goes within a week or two. But, living on instead of dying, and feeding and continuing to grow, the living head and that part of the body of tho fish to whitS it was attached grew out bpyend the line of the lifeless head and cam<» practically to constitute the fish, with th» lifeless head projecting from its side, like the thick stub of the sawed-K)ff branch of a tree projecting from the side of tha trunk. The lifeless head was, at last, about a third of the length of the fish back from the surviving head. The .total length of the fish when it died four months after birth was about one and a-quarta: inches

At thu New York Aquarium last year out of a lot of 10,000 salmon eggs one was born with tvvt, heads and two forward bodies ■Dvojectintr at an anpie from a singe hot 3 .?. The tw > heads appeared to act independently in fesding. It lived for onhr a few monl^'j. Seven months and a lensjth of #svd inches make perhaps the rocord for such freak fishes, >a double-headed rainbow trout, having once Tseen raised to ,febal age and "length by tiie fish hatclicry at Duluth, Minnesota.

In February, J931, Ered Mi" lor, of Tacoma." 'Washington, caught a _ tiger sharV, eisir feet in length and sighteon inches in diameter, which had two hea<ls and two tails on the "one tody. He caught jt with hook and fine, and had a hard straggle to land the monster. A very rare freak is an alhino ■fish. In Minnesota, however, are to he seen a number of albino brook trout. From a singlo tiry specimen ttjei b**-$ to «T »chi>ol

of upwards of three thousand. This white brook trout was &n accident. In hatching spawn in the spring of 1893 a tiny white fellow developed. It was carefully guarded, and when full grown its spawn were saved and hatched' separately. Nearly all the fry were white like the parent. The fish are perfect brook trout in form, .and have the tiny red spots along their sides found on the regular species. The body of the fish varies in colour from purs white to cream colour. The fins are pinker than those of the ordinary trout, and are edged with a strip of pure white. One strange freak of piscatorial nature is that, wherevtr these fish are planted, they become loaders of the schools of fish found in large pords. — Tribune Magazine..