The Allen Almanac

There are some awesome time-lapsed videos of zebrafish embryo development posted by PZ Myers at Pharyngula.

This one is an annotated video of 18 hours of development time-lapsed to 48 seconds. It shows the embryo grow from about 8-16 cells upto the beginning of a head and tail. Follow the link to Pharyngula for a detailed explanation.

This one shows the effects of alcohol on the development. The one on the left is normal. The one on the right is soaking in 3% alcohol. According to Dr. Myers, “it’s rather like having a woman start drinking straight Everclear a few weeks after discovering she’s pregnant, and staying snockered throughout the first trimester.”

you should be able to see that the one on the right develops more slowly. Especially at the end, the one on the left will be twitching vigorously and spinning in the chorion, while the lush on the right is much slower. There are also some subtle deformities in tail shape, and you might notice odd schmutzy gunk on the animal’s epidermis…more about that later.