London: Bizarre it may seem, but the sky is said to be showering tadpoles over Japan.
The apparent downpour of tadpoles in central Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture has baffled residents -- in fact, clouds of the dead creatures have fallen from sky in many cities in the region since the start of the month, media reports said.
In one incident, a 55-year-old man who was caught in a tadpole downpour described hearing a strange sound in the parking lot of a civic centre in the city of Nanao. And, upon further exploration, he found 100 dead tadpoles covering the windshields of cars in an area measuring 10 square metres.
Dead tadpole downpours were also reported by local officials 48 hours later in the city of Hakusan in the same prefecture, British newspaper 'The Daily Telegraph' quoted the Japanese 'Kyodo News' as saying.
The raining down of small creatures such as frogs and fish is a rare meteorological phenomenon that is reported from time to time across the world.
Scientists have widely attributed the surreal raining of animals to strong winds, storms and water sprouts sucking up creatures before depositing them further inland. However, this explanation has not satisfied meteorologists in Ishikawa.
Officials at Kanazawa Local Meteorological Observatory told local media they were unsure how the tadpoles had arrived as there had been no reports of strong winds at the time.
However, dismissing this theory, a researcher at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology in Abiko said: "Crows eat tadpoles but if these were spat out (by the birds), a wider area should have been covered."