A 14-day-old tadpole tries a smile for the camera as it is photographed in minute detail by an electron microscope.
Displaying features normally invisible to the naked eye, the infant frog was caught in his garden pond by David Spears, a science photographer, who placed it under the £90,000 machine in his home laboratory in Kirkland, Somerset.
Mr Spears, 65, a former zoologist, said: “You can capture an image like this using a macro or a light microscope, but only an electron microscope gives you the same level of definition and depth of field. What appear to be his eyes are actually his nostrils as his eyes are much further back on his head.”
The tadpole is only 1cm long and the mouth parts with which it is forming the smile are used for scraping algae from the surfaces of rocks for food.
you can see clearly that he appears to be smiling
Mr Spears added: “All of him is in focus and you can see clearly that he appears to be smiling.”
After finishing college in 1970, Mr Spears went into neurobiology research and began working for the Open University when it opened. While there he set up the first electron microscope unit at the university and soon afterwards started working for London Scientific Films, an independent television production company.
He made more than 300 films, as a director and cameraman, and now creates images for scientific textbooks and journals all over the world — although every now and then he pops into the garden to find a new subject to put under the lens.
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