Niamh Shackleton
Finding Nemo fans have been left floored after discovering new information about clownfish.
For any Pixar fans out there, you'll know exactly what what happens in the movie; but for those of you who haven't seen it, I'll give you a brief synopsis.
In Finding Nemo, there's a mom and dad clownfish but — in true Pixar fashion — there's a tragic twist and the mom and most of the babies she'd just had end up being eaten by another, much larger fish.
The dad fish, Marlin, thought he'd lost all of his family. However, he stumbles across an egg that survived the ordeal which grows up to be his one and only son, Nemo.
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Because of their experiences, Marlin is a very overprotective father and Nemo challenges his dad a lot. One day, he defies Marlin and gets too close to the sea surface and ultimately gets captured by a diver. It's then left to Marlin to search for his missing son.
OK, so what exactly has been 'ruined' for Finding Nemo fans, I hear you ask? Well it all comes down to the fact that clownfish can actually change sex.
All schools of clownfish have one dominant female who sits at the top of the hierarchy, followed by a dominant male and younger male fish. They decrease in size the further down the hierarchy you get.
The dominant male and female are the only pair that breeds, and if the female dies or disappears, then the dominant male changes sex to become the dominant female.
Following this, the largest juvenile fish becomes the dominant male and... you might see where we're going with this.
Basically, if the plot of Finding Nemo was more scientifically accurate, Marlin would turn into a female after the mom dies and then Nemo would become the dominant male. They would then breed together.
"He would become his own father while his father became his mother, and they would raise little incestuous Nemos together without a drip of sentimentality," Stephen R. Palumbi and Anthony R. Palumbi write in their book The Extreme Life of the Sea.
Some people (myself included) are only just learning about how the hierarchy works for clownfish, and it's left them feeling a type of way when it comes to Finding Nemo.
Taking to Reddit in recent days to discuss the matter, one person said: "Now you won't see Finding Nemo in the same light again."
Another person dubbed the revelation as a 'childhood ruining fact'.
"That’s why he was so desperate to find Nemo," joked someone else, as another quipped: "This is the real reason Nemo ran away."