A woman in Atlanta bit into a blue peanut M&M and discovered a tiny, blackened bone, probably from a nut obsessed animal who crept into the M&M to eat the peanut, then died of remorse. A Mars rep told the customer it was probably just a peanut twig. Whatever; by our estimations, this animal is most likely smaller than a peanut M&M, but has a comically wide and very short neck. Hmm, maybe we should instead ask an expert to deduce where this bone came from, which is what the customer did.

The professor who helped her out proved why you never go to a professor if you want to be coddled:

“It’s definitely bone, and it came from some type of mammal,” Blumer told FOXNews.com. “This isn’t [a] tail vertebra – it’s something higher up, and the reason I’m certain for that is because it’s hollow. The nerve cord would run through there.”

Blumer could not identify exactly what type of animal the vertebra came from but said that, because of the smoothness of the material, it had likely been dead for some time.

“It doesn’t look like there’s even a remnant of flesh on this,” Blumer said. “This has either been out in the environment for a while and it got into that container, or it went through some organism’s digestive tract first. For example, you might find something like this in an owl pellet,” Blumer said, referring to the indigestible material regurgitated by the animal.

Despite that initial no-big-deal response from a Mars rep, the company now says it’s asked for the product to be returned so it can investigate further, and blah blah blah food safety is of the utmost importance to us you know the drill.

What’s most frightening about this whole story, however, is the FDA’s response: “The FDA takes every complaint it receives very seriously and looks into it.” Oh no. They’ve gotten to you, too, FDA.

“Atlanta Woman Finds ‘Mammal Bone’ in Blue M&M” [FOXNews.com] (Thanks to Matt!)
(Photo: Blane Bachelor)

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