Abstract
ON March 2 last a small fishing-boat engaged in trawling at about 20 kilometres from the coast, off Monte Argentaro (Tuscan Maremma), captured a specimen of the Mediterranean Red Mullet (Mullus barbatus) tightly incased in a large colony of Pyrosoma atlanticum. The head of the fish had reached the bottom of the social cylinder, which fitted it to a nicety. The Pyrosoma measures 0.112 millimetre in length and 0.032 millimetre at its greatest transverse diameter; the mullet is 0.152 millimetre long, so that only 0.040 millimetre of its tail projects beyond the tightly-fitting Pyrosoma ! The fish was taken alive, but how it could have lived in such conditions or how it got into its tight jacket is to me most enigmatical. Even admitting a certain amount of elasticity in the tight-fitting tube in which its head, body, and fins are incased, its movements could only have been very limited, and a very incomplete respiration and perhaps nutrition might have come to it through the orifices of the zooids.
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GIGLIOLI, H. A Singular Case. Nature 34, 313 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034313c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034313c0
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