Two days earlier, it had scooped some sand from a drift, sieved it to a fineness of less than a hundred and fifty microns, and dropped a portion half the size of ababy aspirin into a funnel on its back.
Dr Sarah Jarvis, a GP and regular on the BBC's The One Show, says at the height of the MMR scare, she would be having "half hour discussions with terrified parents" in her baby clinic ona daily basis.