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Armadillos - continued...

meat market in Buenos Aires
Meat market in Buenos Aires

In La Plata, Fernández began to gather different species of armadillos in 1906, after finishing his studies in Europe. In those years, the mulita was a highly priced meal and thousands of them were sent to urban markets. Fernández had several problems breeding mulitas in captivity, but he could obtain relatively easily living specimens in delicatessen stores. He demonstrated that all sets of embryos were the product of the early division of a single embryo derived from a single fertilized egg (Fernandez 1909). Fernández succeeded in securing two well-preserved very young embryonic vesicles, in which the demarcation of the several embryonic primordial had not yet manifested difficult because they occured only at a particular moment in the year. In this case, the gastronomic importance of mulitas and their facilities of transportation from the field to the city and the lab were local circumstances that made it possible to coordinate 'research and phenomenon timing'.

vesticle from mulita
Photograph of the developed vesticle from a mulita (Scheme).

Reference: García, Susana . 2007. Armadillos and the issue of specific polyembryony. The Virtual Laboratory (ISSN 1866-4784), https://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/references?id=art72&page=p0003