Fishy: How Disney got Finding Nemo wrong

THE plot of Finding Nemo was wrong, because the lost fish’s father would have turned into a female to protect the family after the death of the mother, scientists have found.

Male clownfish, immortalised in the Disney film, change sex if their female mate is eaten or dies, research by marine biologists has shown.

It found that male clownfish, which are a distinctive orange colour with blue-white stripes bordered by black, become female to protect their territory and group. Female clownfish are larger and more aggressive than males and even attack sharks.

Male clownfish look after the eggs and fan them while females act as security guards, issuing warning calls and even launching attacks on predators.

In the film Finding Nemo, a young clownfish’s mother is eaten by a barracuda but its father, Marlin, survives. Nemo, the only surviving baby, is lost and pursued by sharks before eventually finding its way back to its father.

In reality, if a mother clownfish is eaten, its mate changes sex and becomes a female, even laying eggs. To ensure the survival of the clownfish group, Marlin would have become Marlene.

“So when Nemo finally gets back to his anemone at the end of the film, he’s actually meeting his mum,” Dr Suzanne Mills, of École Pratique des Hautes Études in France, told a symposium at the University of Exeter.