A man was left stunned after tucking into his lunch break boiled egg – only to find it had a second egg inside.
Sam, who chose not to share his surname, unpeeled the shell of what he thought was an ordinary snack, only to find another shell inside.
While the first had a layer of cooked egg white, a fully-formed second egg was beneath.
READ MORE: Customers furious as mince pies spotted in Sainsbury’s over three months before Christmas
The tradesman cut into it and found a perfectly normal-looking boiled egg.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the smaller egg inside while peeling the main egg,” Sam, who lives near Macclesfield in Cheshire, told What’s The Jam.
“I’ve never seen anything like it or heard of it before so, as soon as I noticed, I started taking pictures as I thought it was rather odd.”
Sam says his parents purchased the eggs, but he believes they didn’t come from a shop.
He added: “A large amount of the other eggs in the same tray are double yolks, but this is the only whole-shelled egg I’ve ever found inside another egg in my life.”
The phenomenon is a rare occurrence caused when a hen’s egg is pushed back up into her reproductive system and becomes embedded in a new egg that is forming.
The second egg forms around the first, making the egg larger.
Sharing the find on social media, the pictures went viral and garnered 57,000 likes.
One person commented: “It’s a good job you didn’t bite into it!”
“Egg-ception,” another user joked.
Someone else said: “That definitely gets a wow!”
“How is this possible?” another viewer wondered.
Someone else dubbed it a “Russian Nesting Egg”.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson shows off new ‘rock band’ look in holiday snap taken by son, four