Werewolf, Egg within an Egg, Upside Down Photos

1. Werewolf

When I was looking at the etymology of dummvirate, I saw mention of werewolf. The root of were is also vir, but via the old English, wer meaning man, male person.

2. Egg within an egg

I watched this video of a large egg, which when cracked contained a smaller fully formed egg complete with shell.

I didn't know whether it was a spoof or not, and if not a spoof then how was it formed?

Formation of an Egg

An egg is formed through several stages.

1. Yolk: The oocyte (yolk) is produced by the ovary, and enters the oviduct.
2. White: In the first part of the oviduct, the magnum, the yolk is covered with the white (albumen).
3. Membrane: In the next section of the oviduct, the isthmus, a membrane is deposited over the partially formed egg.
4. Shell: Next the egg reaches the uterus (shell gland) where a layer of calcium carbonate is deposited around it. This takes between nineteen and twenty-six hours. This forms the shell.
5. Protective bloom: The last layer, protective bloom, is deposited around the egg. This seals the pores in the shell and keeps the egg fresher for longer.
6. Finally the egg is laid.

The egg-in-egg phenomenon occurs when a second oocyte is released before the first egg is laid. A contraction occurs, called a counter-peristalsis contraction, which causes the egg to travel backwards through the oviduct, where it joins with the second oocyte to be coated with albumen, membrane and shell again. It ends up as a rather large egg for the poor hen to lay!

3. Upside Down Photos

A friend of mine was having some problems with images on his website. Some of the images displayed upside down and some the right way up. However, when the images were opened in a new tab, they were the right way up. What on earth was going on?

You can take a photo with an iPhone in different orientations. For speed, instead of saving the correctly orientated version of the photo, Apple adds an EXIF tag 'orientation' which tells apps which way up the image should be displayed. Using Jeffrey's Exif Viewer, you can see the details saved along with the image. For example, for an image that was taken with the phone upside down, you get

but for the right way up you instead see

Mystery solved. Now we know what is going on, the next problem is what to do about it. It seems that the solution is to rotate the photos before uploading. There are tools which enable you to do this by rotating based on the orientation. Note that I have not tried and of these tools.