Body of lizard found in chicken egg
A MAN got the shock of his life when he went to crack an egg for dinner - and found a fully formed gecko inside the shell.
Dr Peter Beaumont, 60, was cooking Thai fishcakes for dinner when he stumbled across the lizard in Darwin.
"I was cracking the eggs into a pan when I noticed one of them was all cloudy," he said.
"I looked at the shell and saw a tiny gecko.''
Dr Beaumont told our sister paper the Northern Territory News the lizard didn't get into the shell after he had discarded it because the reptile was embedded between the inner shell and the egg's membrane.
He said the gecko could have crawled into the chicken to feast on an embryo - and got stuck. The egg, which he bought at a normal supermarket, then formed around the lizard.
"If you open up a dead chook, you sometimes see the partly-formed eggs,'' he said. "The gecko could have been looking for a feed and got trapped.''
He also believes the discovery - a possible world-first - may help solve a food poisoning puzzle.
Dr Beaumont said eggs sometimes contained salmonella, a potentially fatal food poisoning often carried by other lizards.
"Maybe this happens all the time,'' he said. "Maybe geckos regularly crawl inside chickens for a feed.
"And this one was unlucky enough to get stuck in an egg.''
A MAN got the shock of his life when he went to crack an egg for dinner - and found a fully formed gecko inside the shell.
Dr Peter Beaumont, 60, was cooking Thai fishcakes for dinner when he stumbled across the lizard in Darwin.
"I was cracking the eggs into a pan when I noticed one of them was all cloudy," he said.
"I looked at the shell and saw a tiny gecko.''
Dr Beaumont told our sister paper the Northern Territory News the lizard didn't get into the shell after he had discarded it because the reptile was embedded between the inner shell and the egg's membrane.
He said the gecko could have crawled into the chicken to feast on an embryo - and got stuck. The egg, which he bought at a normal supermarket, then formed around the lizard.
"If you open up a dead chook, you sometimes see the partly-formed eggs,'' he said. "The gecko could have been looking for a feed and got trapped.''
He also believes the discovery - a possible world-first - may help solve a food poisoning puzzle.
Dr Beaumont said eggs sometimes contained salmonella, a potentially fatal food poisoning often carried by other lizards.
"Maybe this happens all the time,'' he said. "Maybe geckos regularly crawl inside chickens for a feed.
"And this one was unlucky enough to get stuck in an egg.''
