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Description: Fish Has Beak Like Bird – Keeper at Park Discovers Freak He is Unable to Classify
Date: July 15 1909Newspaper published in: Washington, DC
Page/Column: 16
Fish Has Beak Like Bird – Keeper at Park Discovers Freak He is Unable to Classify
From the Los Angeles Examiner. E. B. Rice, keeper of Eastlake Park, has a fish that he expects may sing like a mockingbird. It has the beak and throat of a bird all right, and half of its body is that of a carp, the other half that of a goldfish.
Mr. Rice was gathering a lot of fish from the lake in a bucket yesterday as breakfast for fish-eating animals in the zoo. As he dipped up a mess of the fish, one stuck a beak up through the water and twittered a protest. This interested Mr. Rice, and he took the beakfish out and placed it in an improvised aquarium.
Either the fish is too young for feathers or is molting, for no plumage has appeared. But the beak and birdlike head are much in evidence, as well as mixed parentage shown by the combined carp and goldfish body.
Dr. David Starr Jordan probably is the only man who can pedigree the ancestry of this fish, if it is a fish, or bird, if it is a bird. Mr. Rice is still undecided as to whether he should provide a cage or a jar for its home.